


The Tragedy of Lady Noriko

by spacemagic



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: (I throw out the comics and set them on fire - you're welcome!), Abusive Relationships, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Autistic Zuko (Avatar), Character Study, Dissociation, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Fire Nation Royal Family, Firebender Ursa, Gen, No Sexual Content, Ozai (Avatar) Being a Terrible Parent, Ozai Dies AU, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Rated M for Mature Themes, not canon compliant with the comics
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-28
Updated: 2020-12-07
Packaged: 2021-03-05 22:41:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 43,903
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25573012
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spacemagic/pseuds/spacemagic
Summary: It was difficult to imagine Princess Ursa, a woman who moved with gentleness and grace, whose soft, shy smile lit up like a pearl under the moon, who delighted in a simple theatre play, doing anything as unseemly as murder. She sat poised and prim, offering him a sweet jasmine tea with a steady hand that had long since been washed any trace of blood.'It is wonderful to see you again, Iroh. I would love to catch up.'Twelve Imperial Firebenders guard the entrances to her quarters. They are comfortable, full of plush furnishings. It doesn't look like a prison cell. If Iroh hadn't just returned from the healer's ward where what remained of his brother lay, he wouldn't think this was a prison cell at all.--[A rewritten Ursa backstory, told through the various hands that shaped her, leading up to one key difference: she doesn't leave her children behind, this time.]
Relationships: Azula & Ursa (Avatar), Lu Ten & Ursa, Ozai/Ursa (Avatar), Ursa & Zuko (Avatar)
Comments: 147
Kudos: 194





	1. gaudy hands, imperfect hands

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [cold fire](https://archiveofourown.org/works/10467909) by [congratsyouvegrownasoul](https://archiveofourown.org/users/congratsyouvegrownasoul/pseuds/congratsyouvegrownasoul). 



> 'Noriko' is the name that Ursa takes while in hiding during the comic 'The Search'. While this fic tells an alternative backstory that isn't at all compliant with what was presented in the comics, it'll sometimes be referenced (for irony's sake, mostly).
> 
>  **content warning:** this piece of work aims to explore the topic of abuse in depth, as it charts Ursa's journey from childhood to Azulon's death. specific content warnings will be included above each chapter when appropriate.

**o. grandmother**

Her grandmother’s nails were painted in colours she would later learn were ‘gaudy’, with beads of painted pearl strung tightly around her wrists. They clicked softly as she moved her fingers, and this caught her attention before she noticed how gaunt her hands were, how they were peppered with marks and scratches and silvery little scars, or that her palms had far too much skin, a saggy blanket creased and crumpled up into a firm grip around the teapot’s handle.

“Mother, please–”

But her grandmother cut off her mother a single raised finger.

“I am dying. I am not dead. I can pour my own tea.”

She herself said nothing. When her grandmother poured black tea into her own cup, she gave a stilted bow at an exact ninety degree angle, as a lady ought to do. Her mother’s words echoed in her head: _Show respect. Hold your tongue._

Her grandmother’s house was strange. It was once the grandest noble estate in the south, a splendid maze of mahogany and tiled courtyards and ancient woodland, but it had fallen into disrepair. Its once-busy corridors lay barren, and no servants slipped across its floors in the quiet of the night. The polished wood was worn, and in some cases, rotting. Its lush gardens had grown wild and beyond control, and her mother had gripped her shoulder and had told her under no circumstances would she be allowed to walk amongst the weeds.

It was not orderly, she had been told. It was not proper. A servant should attend to her. A noblewoman’s hands should not be worn out by work. 

Her elder brothers, who like their father, did not have one lick of flame between them, were allowed to tussle amongst themselves back then, before the military straightened them out and squared them off into the correct box. They were not given such advice about how to groom their hands or where and when to wander. For the greater part of their stay, they went out ‘spelunking’ in the wilds that encircled the estate, through the thick of woods, paddling in streams, looking for lost shrines in the mountain’s shadow that had yet to be toppled down, getting into scrapes and fighting over scraps, their hands a whole history of impulsive decisions. Soon, they would be calloused from gripping a sword too tightly, but for now, every nick was a childish mistake that she was not allowed to partake in.

She was not like her brothers. She had enough fire for herself and all her siblings combined. Her life was a clearly detailed map and her purpose at this junction was to perform.

Thus, she had been instructed to present a firebending sequence using advanced forms, requiring a technical ability that far outclassed what girls her age typically possessed, to her ailing grandmother. Her mother spoke of how once, she had been summoned to court to perform in front of Fire Lord Sozin himself, and that such spectacles would eventually be expected of a capable young lady at any formal presentation. Performance would become rote.

She stood up to a little wooden stage and performed a perfectly executed sequence of moves in the Imperial Standard forms, more colloquially known as Sozin Style. 

Her tutor would have called it nothing less than flawless. 

(Not a single hair was out of place.)

“Your daughter moves like a marionette,” her grandmother had said. “It’s uninspired.”

Her mother spluttered some kind of excuse. She was cut off, again, by a single raised finger. 

“Surely your daughter can speak for herself?”

They turned in her direction. A lady ought to have excused herself with grace. A lady ought to have given her apologies with her gaze dusting the floor and a low, respectful bow. 

Her mother’s words echoed in her head: _hold your tongue._

The candlelight behind her leapt upwards, three times its height, turning a brilliant white, like the lightning contained in brewing storm clouds, sparking, about to strike. 

“Darling, _speak_.”

She did not speak. She scowled, spun around, and stormed off without saying a single word. 

The fire died within an instant.

She was nine years old. 

She knew where she was going. Her brothers’ whispers were not nearly as quiet as they thought they were and she had a good ear and a keen sense of direction. She wouldn’t get lost. 

Her knees were caked in mud and not a single hair was in place when her mother found her scowling in a quiet grove, arms crossed, no stone carvings or weathered gates in sight. 

Her mother seized her hand. 

She had thought her mother would scream at her. She had thought she would have gotten the scolding of her life. But her mother dragged her back to the estate by the elbow without saying a word.

This would be her first lesson on the subject: silence is both a courtesy and a weapon. 

She was confined to her room for the rest of the week. She had almost tried to scramble out of the window, but her eldest brother caught her, and put her back in her place. She would spend the evenings with her ear pressed against a wall, overhearing her first brother laugh like a breeze, her second brother boasting of how easily they had found the ‘untouched’ shrine, behind the curtain of a waterfall, where the moon shone like a pearl.

They didn’t speak to her. They looked at her only with the plainest of faces.

A week had almost passed when her grandmother summoned the entire family to her favourite sitting room. There was not a shade of red or gold in it. Instead, furniture was draped in jade silk with silver-speckled dragonflies, the walls were adorned with unstrung lutes of differing sizes and shapes. She had wondered when the last time they were touched.

Her grandmother clutched a scroll, covered in characters burned by the elegant fire of her own hand, which she read through half-moon spectacles. She announced to whom the house, the grounds, the faded tapestries, the worn tigerworm silk rugs, the mismatching clay tea sets, and whatever meagre holdings she had remaining, would be bequeathed to. Her first brother would receive one of her lutes, because his hands could be put to better use than holding a weapon. Her second brother, one of her flutes, because not only his fingers but his tongue could be better occupied.

“To my youngest daughter,” her grandmother began, reading off a lengthy scroll through half-moon spectacles, “Whose fortuitous marriage and stalwart loyalty to her sovereign, the chosen hand of Agni, has blessed her with riches and reputation beyond what I and her scorned father could ever hope to offer, I bequeath her nothing, for she does not need of it.”

Her mother’s knuckles turned white.

“To my youngest granddaughter,” her grandmother began, “Born lucky, with a fire as bright as your grandfather’s, you have need of nothing. I would bequeath you nothing except that which your mother considers her greatest shame. I give you a simple reminder of your heritage.”

Placed in front of her was a plain wooden box. Her grandmother opened the lid with care. Inside, wrapped in simple cloth, was an ornate hair piece that had been gifted to Avatar Roku on his sixteenth birthday, worn proudly until his final moments.

Her mother remained still as her grandmother watched Ursa take the box without a word spilling from her lips.

They kept vigil for thirty days. On the thirty-first, Ta Min died. 

———

**i. mother**

The first thing she did was hide the box in a place no other could reach. The second thing she did was sit attentively as if her hands had not just touched something cursed.

“Our name was once respected, but now carries the tone of disgrace. There will be no more treachery in this family. Loyalty matters above all.”

She was brought up with the burden of becoming an accomplished young woman. Her mother crafted the curriculum herself: she would be instructed in history and the fine arts, recall lectures of Sozin’s martial triumphs with expert accuracy, recite courtly poetry representing the strongest intellectual triumphs of the day, calligraph the rhetoric of great speeches from both princes and generals with a brush of ink. From a sensible distance, she would marvel at the revolutions in natural science and engineering that made this golden era possible for them, with the tap of her mother’s fingers promptly reminding her that these admirable disciplines belonged to the working hands of those without flame, not those of a gentlewoman.

“You will need to perform thrice as well to be respected in court. They will accept nothing less than perfect.”

Her mother’s hands were not perfect. They were covered in blemishes and long, inky veins, calloused on her fingertips from where she plucked the harp in the long afternoons of the summer. They handled fire with a careless grace that reminded her of the crest of an oncoming wave, nothing like the sharp, punctuated movements she drilled in bending practice. Once, she had tried to copy her movements, to make her fire ripple with colours, as her mother did.

Her tutor had chided her. “It is unseemly to wield fire like water.”

She would not speak a word of this. At eleven, she had learnt how to ask questions without moving her lips. She would slip around soundlessly after the servants, who knew what the word quiet meant better than anyone, and observe: after the sun fell, her mother would dance wordlessly in the waiting room like the air was beneath her feet; her first brother would hold his fingers against the neck of his grandmother’s lute that he’d pulled out from beneath his bed while he plucked the same six notes of a war song; her second brother would sneak out to the stables and rub the wrinkled bellies of a komodo-rhino’s litter of pups, pockets full of treats he had believed the servants hadn’t caught him slipping out of the kitchen. She saw how a wire could take the shape of a lock, and prised open locked boxes in the library, where she befriended old theatre scrolls, banned productions that told marvellous tales of wayward spirits in the Earth Kingdom or spectacular romances between the elements. When her father was home, everyone stayed in their correct place while he played pai sho in his study. He set up clay tiles like toy soldiers as the wick of a candle shrunk to nothing.

At twelve, she made her first misstep. 

Her father had returned to the front weeks before and all that was left of him were clipped, punctual letters. On clear nights, when the stars were bright enough, her brothers would leave the estate to wander across windswept hills with their weapons at their backs like they were the descendents of ancient warrior-sages from a scroll of poetry and not the ill-behaved sons of a minor army official, gangly teenage boys who had shot up like string beans and had underestimated the amount of lice involved in sleeping under the stars. She would slip behind them, and follow in their footsteps. She would watch from behind the bushes as they drew their blades, held them like two halves of a lightning bolt, throwing themselves at each other like little whirlwinds. She would watch, and imitate. She would pull her flames apart into halves and twist forward and strike—

She took a sudden breath and the little sparks running along her arms sunk into her veins and it felt like _pain_ and she screamed—

The thunder could be heard from the next village. 

Her brothers spun towards her.

She should have run. She should have run and have said nothing of the incident and they would sit at the dinner table and when their mother asked of what they had learnt today, they would speak of their history lectures and she would speak of the art of calligraphy. Instead, she fell to her knees, and pleaded with them: keep this secret, she’d hold her tongue, she just wanted to share this piece of them, she wouldn’t have dared ask them to teach her swordplay, her brothers who looked at her as if she was made of stained glass, as if her hands could not handle something as coarse. It did not matter. They brought her back to the house with burn marks before dawn broke, ushering her through the back entrances the servants used. It did not matter. Her mother caught her with raw sores that ran up her arms and told her father, who retaliated by sending her brothers to an elite military academy in the capital, six days sail to the west.

She did not walk amongst the weeds again. She stayed in her correct place. Her mother began writing letters while lightning’s marks faded to silver. She did not see her brothers again until their hands were thick with scars, until their faces were lined with age, until they had lawless children of their own. Reportedly, they had had a marvellous time at school.

This would be her second lesson on the subject: silence both a weapon and a shield. 

“Your daughter is exceptionally well-mannered.”

She watched the crook of the teapot tilt as black tea fell into a cup. A servant’s hand.

It was her father who answered. “She has been educated properly. Nothing less would be expected.”

Thus, when her mother’s hands had been doused in a floral perfume that did not suit her, she did not say a word. She saw an answer when her mother’s hands moved only to handle a teacup.

“You say she’s a prodigy.”

Her father answered with the affirmative. Her mother sat with a stone in her throat. 

“The interested party will need some demonstration of skill.”

With a small bow, Ursa stood up to the performing stage. 

It was said that rage was the best fuel for fire.

Ursa did not speak out of turn, did not step out of place, did not slip or spill. Every movement was to be the essence of grace. 

It churned, inside of her. 

Her mother’s knuckles were clenched tightly under the table. Her father watched expectantly. 

It broiled and it seethed.

She lifted a hand and a great plume of fire leapt upwards and devoured the air.

Could rage be a thing of beauty?

This question had been asked before and would be asked time and time again as she let herself be consumed into her fire. They would say that Lady Ursa was a spectacle to behold the moment a flame left her fingertips.

Her mother would never say this. Her mother’s hands moved quickly as they signed documents that had been waxed shut with the thick gold and red of the royal seal.

The night she left, she took the box from its hidden perch and lit a flame as bright as a star on her little finger, sealing the latch shut.

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I always thought that Roku was probably from a noble family, given that he was friends with Sozin growing up. The rest of the alternative backstory spiralled from there.
> 
> Next week's section: iii. prince / immaculate hands.


	2. immaculate hands

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **content warning:** emotional manipulation, emotional abuse, destructive & violent behaviour towards servants and other unnamed characters. 
> 
> ursa meets her prince. ozai makes his mark.

**ii. the prince**

She took the box she had sealed with her and would hide it beneath a tile of the same shade of the courtyard where they met.

It would be several years before they did so, on account of his oversight of several naval campaigns in the east. They shared letters, though they were short, stilted things made of pretty words. Her fingers traced over the characters of his name, enamoured by how precisely it had been burned into a page, and she was so taken by the strokes of it that it did not strike her as strange that they did not meet in the royal palace’s throne room, as was customary. Instead, they met by a fountain on a temperate isle in the south, in a courtyard whose cherry blossoms had just been pruned short.

At his arrival, she fell into a low, sweeping bow that was as all things Ursa now did: graceful. Her eyes did not dare to even brush his face and instead lingered on his hands.

“His Royal Highness, Prince Ozai.”

The prince’s hands were nothing less than immaculate. Long, slender fingers curled upwards into a fine point, into a precise turn of phrase. His skin was smooth without mark or blemish. They moved sparingly, only to illustrate what was spoken, to gesture to something greater. With a certain dignified restraint. Perhaps another woman might have described them as handsome, although she did not care much for that aspect. What was certain, through their fine condition and certain, concise motions, were that these were the hands of royalty. Hands that would carry great power.

These hands dismissed all others with a single gesture. They then beckoned her forward, to stand beneath the shade of a tree still pink in blossom, where their only company was the quiet of an empty pond.

“Look at me,” were his first words to her and her alone.

And so she did.

“I demand only loyalty,” he had told her.

(This was the first lie that he told.)

And so she gave him her loyalty and more. She drowned herself in her loyalty, and still had a fountain of herself to give.

But it did not begin a bitter thing.

The day they wed, while her hair was pulled aloft to hold up a weighty piece of gold, a new strain on her neck, her husband’s hands danced around hers with something masquerading as gentleness.

She had not expected love, of course, for such things were rarely found in marriage. It was not all unpleasant, though. He had expected her to leave her family behind, as was customary, cutting ties and weaving herself into his, which she did with more than a little enthusiasm. The palace was nothing like the stifled, too-thin corridors that stitched her childhood home together: it was like a dream woven of sun and shadow, of gardens that seemed gilded by the light.

At her first presentation to the Fire Lord, she performed splendidly, which was a gift in of itself. Her fire was proud and powerful and perfectly placed; nothing less than expected. The court whirled with rumour. Lady Ursa, they would call her, perhaps spirited, perhaps mocking. A woman who spoke in poems and spun golden flame within her fingers like a weaver of a tapestry. Her face a gilded mirror to her unlucky mother, daughter of two ancient and powerful lines turned traitor, kept in place not by flame or by sword, but by the silk strings of court that could cut throats, if pulled taut. A guest, a hostage, a wife – was there a difference?

These rumblings were inconsequential. What mattered was that the Fire Lord had nodded in approval.

Her husband too had been very pleased with her. He had called her a remarkable performer, which had caused her heartbeat to skitter in a manner that was most unusual. He had rewarded her by taking her to the theatre. She delighted in the details of different masks.

He had even indulged her in polite conversation afterwards.

(“Who did you like the most?” she had asked him.

“I thought the wife was very clever.”)

She allowed herself to smile, because she walked beneath a thousand stars with a prince’s hand clutching her fingers, and she must be lucky.

He was, in his own peculiar way, charming. He knew the shape of a romance: he knew how to offer small pleasures, and would reward her conduct accordingly. Trinkets, treasures, clever compliments, garments in the latest fashionable styles (which he chose, he had excellent taste), trips to a daring adaptation of _Dawn of an Empire in Vermillion_ , a propaganda piece that she would no doubt tear to shreds afterwards. He called her, with some approximation of fondness, a ruthless critic.

He would not allow her to refuse these gifts. She was his princess.

As his princess, she would be exempt too, from his temper.

She was not unobservant. Broken porcelain, not yet swept away. A servant walking too quickly. The muffled sound of a voice raised into something sharp from three rooms away. As his princess, she would brush away the pieces. Soothe the burn. Quiet the sound.

The eye of the monsoon was the width of a silver needle in which she placed herself in the precise centre.

When the rains had fallen, he’d storm into her chambers without a knock, hands still trembling with rage. He’d fall into a piece of furniture seemingly selected at random: an armchair, a selection of silk cushions, a bench whose carvings depicted the glory of Sozin’s comet, the crimson satin of her bed, or even, sometimes, he’d fall into her hands, who were only soft for this purpose. She’d curl up to him, shape herself around him, stroke his cheek as he spoke viciously of his most loathed enemies, their snide mockery, of how they planned to humiliate him, of how they belittled him outside of the corner of his eye, of plots and plans to thwart him, of how even his own brother considered him inferior, lesser, unworthy of even _contempt,_ who delighted in every opportunity to present him as weak, how readily he had been dismissed by his father despite his strength and his skill and his unwavering _loyalty_ , who thought so little of him that he could not even understand his _rage_ —

She cradled him. She held a burning firestorm in softened hands and sat with his rage like a balm. She too, would grow to loathe them. She would let his wounds become her wounds and she would let them fester.

She would prove herself worthy of it all.

It had begun innocuously enough, with another pair of eyes, another pair of ears. She watched for loose lips and listened for what was held back, spoken only behind a silk curtain. Not a soul would dare speak ill of a prince in court, not unless they placed no value on their life whatsoever, but they would certainly whisper of it. She placed a coin in a servant’s purse and had them collect every barb and bite and reel them off, a list of thorns.

She discovered that the prince was respected, not beloved by his peers. His accomplishments, while praiseworthy in their own right, were not exceptional. His military achievements, which included many impressive victories, often paled in comparison to his sibling's more illustrious record. A pity, they would say, that he was born royalty. A pity that they expected a second sun instead of a simple flame.

A pity, that he was weak.

Princess Ursa had committed every word of this to memory.

She then dripped her brush in ink that could only be seen in the light of a gentle fire, and inscribed a coded list on the back of a handkerchief. Those who had wronged him, mocked him, who threatened his good standing at court, who challenged his positions as close to openly as they could get. Those who had spread slander and lies of their neglected prince, their wounded prince.

She would cross off their names one by one.

Blackmail was the simplest solution, most often. A nondescript hand, a smattering of personal details. Sometimes forgery was required: evidence that they hadn’t conceived as being possible to find, brought into existence. She thanked her mother’s handwriting lessons. She began the habit of scrupulously combing through the notes of each High Council meeting that she wasn’t permitted to attend, to re-evaluate threats, assess for new ones. Another coin or two or three found its way into a servant’s palm. She put to memory which servants were reliable; she put to memory their schedules, re-arranged them as appropriate. She shielded them from her husband’s firestorms.

She went to tea with the noble wives of those who had once thought her beneath the title of princess. She collected stray petals of gossip over the scent of jasmine. She pulled strings.

The abrupt resignation of the Second Royal Minister of the Interior, who had always considered Prince Ozai a worthless bureaucratic meddler at best, had been stitched so delicately that the hand guiding the thread was unseen.

Princess Ursa showed her husband evidence of her handiwork. He rewarded her with an outing to a faithful showing of _The Tragedy of Lady Noriko_ , classical opera in twelve parts about the First Sun dynasty’s last Fire Lady Regent, a remarkable woman who had ruled with terror during a slow descent into madness while her ten year old son lay in his deathbed. The titular character’s final speech sent a shiver down her spine.

(That evening, a servant was found dead in a pond, covered in scorch marks. It was not the first warning sign.)

‘A charming first performance,’ he had remarked of the lead actress. ‘I think she could do more.’

She felt bold. She felt braver. She pushed for more.

She broadened her network – she would not call them spies, that was too gauche – inside and outside of the palace. She led a golden thread from her chambers to couriers and maids, to the wives of guards, soldiers, sailors, manual labourers of all stripes, the servants of sages, the maids of distant households. She learnt many new things. Her husband had more respect amongst the naval officers, who acknowledged his rather unconventional captaincy, where he had promoted skilled non-bender career soldiers above noble sons, whereas the traditionalists within the army preferred his brother without question. That his proposed reforms to the tribunal system were loathed by most of the capital’s lawyers and bureaucrats, who believed his proposals challenged the ancient customs of law dating from before the first dynasty of Fire Lords. That a certain secretive faction of Fire Sages had little time for neither the crown prince nor his brother, believing one careless and the other cruel, and that both would debase the names of spirits and further break the balance of the nation.

When she told him of her findings, he spoke rather casually of violence, and explained in a cool, even tone how the military castigated soldiers for their insubordination with lashes of fire.

She did not look horrified. She smiled as if he had said something soft.

Instead, she urged him to consider new methods of elimination. Bribery, as it turned out, could be surprisingly effective. Rank and prestige could even be promised to those who repeatedly complied, to those who had proven their usefulness and dedication.

“You will need allies,” she had told him. “As much as they will surely need you. It is mutually beneficial. An enemy can become a friend.”

This was her second misstep.

“You’ve grown bold, my darling wife,” he said softly, as his fingers danced around hers with something masquerading as gentleness. “You talk back to your husband as if it will have no consequence. What inspired such behaviour?”

He did not touch her. He only looked at her curiously as his immaculate hands moved around the shape of hers.

She swallowed. She began by telling him that she had only thought to please him, to prove herself worthy, to “I had only thought to please you,” she began, attempting to tell him that she had some thoughts and suggestions about their underhand activities that she truly believed would be useful to his cause, as he watched her tremble through an explanation.

His fingers stopped moving.

She felt her heart race ahead.

“Look at me.”

And so she did.

“Do you remember what you promised, the very first day we met?”

She nodded.

“Understand this,” he began. “I _will_ ask you for your opinion, as I am a forgiving man who respects the great intelligence of his wife, and understands that… while your manner can leave something to be desired, your abilities show great promise. Other, lesser men would not allow you this chance. They would let you waste away at the palace drifting through a life of vapid luxuries, in your gilded cage.”

He took her hand so delicately that to say ‘pull’ would be too forceful.

“In my opinion,” he continued. “A life of trivialities would be a disgusting waste. You have such talent, Princess Ursa, that has been overlooked due to rather unfortunate prejudices. I would not let you ruin your gifts, or your ambition. You would prefer to be useful, wouldn’t you?”

His fingers entwined themselves in hers.

She felt herself nod.

“Well then. You must remember who you are useful for. You must remember who you serve.”

Ursa felt her throat close shut.

“Do you understand?” he asked.

She nodded: firmly and clearly.

“Good,” he said, his voice softening. “I am glad we have an understanding.”

This would be the third lesson: silence was survival. It was the simplest of the lessons, and yet this would hurt her the most.

She kept her silence as she collected a pretty web of scandals, betrayals, grievances, axes to grind. Disappearances would be arranged. She became fluent in the language of ultimatums and code. She had reconsidered her instinctive revulsion towards assassination, briefly, although it had felt too unseemly. She had been tutored, as a girl, in traditional philosophies that emphasised ethics and duty and devotion, although not a word of those proverbs felt of use here. In a court that savoured brash military parades and passionate declarations of war, that brandished arms readily and with pride, that reservation felt prudish. Her husband called it a weakness.

She quite often visited the theatre, regardless.

(When they went to the theatre, he would softly take her hand and place a kiss on the edge of her fingertips, and she felt something twitch inside of her.)

She learnt new things about herself. Pleasantries and wine and fond diatribes of how husbands and brothers commanded fleets and battalions and platoons were exchanged with sharp noblewomen who thought Princess Ursa a fresh mouse for her husband to toy with. (This made her want to retch). Her Most Illustrious Majesty, Fire Lady Ilah, believed Princess Ursa to be a spider-snake that would be the downfall of the Royal family, though Ursa herself had never offered anything but courtesies. (This, she didn’t mind half as much.) Arch-conservatives of the court held her still in quiet loathing simply because she was born of a line of treason and dispute; all thought her unworthy of the prince, although some saw her too as a lacklustre prize, a great shame, put upon her husband as punishment for the failure of his last campaign: his mission to capture the Avatar. (She was a perfected reflection of her mother, his daughter.)

She continued to hold her silence. She wore her most splendid smile. She would be nothing except the perfect princess. She did not even blink when she discovered Fire Lord Azulon doubted that she would last more than a year or two at her husband’s side, simply because he believed his second son was useless.

(The first time her husband raised his voice while she was in the same room as him, a courier had told him that his father had refused his request for an audience with him and his wife.

She had kept her tongue very still. She did not move an inch.

It had taken the servants four weeks to scrub out the scorch marks from the antique floorboards.)

It caused something in her to spin.

She had to work harder. She had to push herself further. Nothing was said to her husband as he skulked around their wing of the palace after the sun fell from the sky. The performance she had to present to him would be nothing less than exceptional.

(He told her, years later, with his perfectly groomed fingernails curled in her hair: ‘You were so eager to please. I did love that about you, you know.’)

And she had planned something truly daring. She had sought to depose a high-ranking general from the Fire Lord’s war council, a staunch ally of Azulon himself. The first phase of the plan was executed without flaw: the general, a traditionalist whose loyalty was thought never in doubt, became slowly embroiled in a political scandal around the misuse of the Crown’s funds, which blew up spectacularly as soon as accusations of shameless nepotism, financial misappropriation, and grand larceny led to a tribunal hearing in which the general was stripped of all rank and right to property, and the whole affair was a spectacular whirlwind of court gossip for the next few months.

No one had even glanced at her. She was her husband’s shadow.

She tried to take pride in the accomplishment. Her husband had certainly been very pleased with her, praising the ‘scope’ of such a plot, and had accompanied her to a modernised adaptation of _The Tale of the Flaming Lute._ The play followed a faithful and noble wife, falsely accused and left penniless, wander the south-westerly isles for years on end with only an instrument for company, in search of her husband, a captain who had been lost at sea.

The performances were rather lacklustre, she had told her husband. It ruined what should have been a good story.

(When her husband took her hand, she thought of how that morning she had seen a maid with raw burns running down her arms, not yet covered by cloth, who could not still her shaking fingers.)

It should have finished with that comment. It should not have spiralled into further scandal when the son of the disgraced general picked up a loose thread, a sliver of a servant, whose trail he traced back to her head steward, a reliable and trusted informant who passed word of his discovery on the back of a wash cloth with trembling fingertips. The general’s son, who was in fact a well-respected colonel in his own right, rising like a column of flame amongst the ranks of officers, began spewing accusation after accusation, spouting vitriol at the royal household for their cowardice, which would have been simple to brush off if he wasn’t a popular name amongst court with a considerable base of support. All of this sent the rumour mill off spinning and sympathetic voices began tutting of foul play, even as he challenged each and every flameless servant who had a scent of suspicion to an honour duel, an Agni Kai.

The colonel had not expected that the challenge would be accepted. He had of course known that in the case of a challenge posed against a non-bender, a chosen firebender could take their place in their stead, but why would any self-respecting firebender leap to the defence of those far beneath their status? The colonel had scoffed at the possibility that anyone would move a finger to defend the honour of a trembling steward, or to defy his rather extraordinary claims, to call into question his account itself, believing his superior firepower proof enough of what he said.

The colonel had certainly not expected a Royal Agni Kai.

(She thought of her husband, the prince.)

Ursa stepped into the ring with grace, dignity, and her head held high.

(She thought of his immaculate hands.)

She moved into position.

(She thought of his immaculate hands and the ghost of a caress from soft fingertips, brushing the fine hairs on the back of her left hand.)

Her fingers, ready to strike.

(She thought of how gently he would hold her wrist in position to still her trembling.)

From her fingers leapt torrents of blinding white flame—

—as if she had pulled her rage from the heart of the sun—

—as if she had been touched by Agni herself.

They said that she moved with ferocity as much as grace, that every step was precise and poised, every strike was a storm and a spectacle, brilliant, seething, furious, awe-inspiring, wonderful, terror. They said that it was a dance as much as a duel, that every clever tactic and conniving move was countered by her star-fire, by flames the colour of mourning.

The colonel, who by all accounts was not untalented or incapable, could not win. Not against her rage. It ended with him on his knees. It ended as she pulled herself and her fingertips apart, and they glittered with the beginnings of a cold fire, royal fire—

It ended when his father, the disgraced general, fell too to his knees, pleading for her to show some semblance of restraint, pleading for her to spare his only son—

And the princess would listen. Never let it be said that Princess Ursa was unyielding when it came to matters of justice. The princess, with a hand full of white flame, gently stroked the left side of the colonel’s face.

It would scar, of course.

No more was said of treachery. It was Princess Ursa’s refined hand who wrote the next page. Beautifully placed characters spoke of how an upstart soldier dared oppose the Royal household’s authority, and the Royal household corrected him.

(What was not scripted, but spoken between the lines, was that some in the Royal household considered the lives of those who couldn’t bring a flame to their fingertips as worth _something_. They were no longer _nothing._ )

She had almost felt proud.

Her husband had praised her in part. He informed her that her performance was ‘spirited and convincing’, if a little too merciful, if a little too soft-hearted, coming to the defence of servants, but he supposed he could understand if not forgive this error: she had not been raised a lady and not a soldier. It would certainly appease the reformists, the movers and shakers that they had been courting alliances with, and for that he was not wholly displeased. He would gracefully spare her the full extent of his wrath. Her husband instead took her hands into his with careful fingers, as he always took, without permission, and he told her a list of names of servants she had protected, servants whose wounds she washed and whose footsteps she kept away from his thunder, who would have to be gone by tomorrow.

She felt a question escape her lips before she could prise them shut.

A misstep.

“This is punishment. I thought you said you understood,” he said, his expression flat. “That I won’t permit disloyalty or disobedience.”

Fingertips moved along her jaw. She tried to keep still, as they clutched her hands. She tried to keep still, as a single thumb pulled back her heavy silk sleeve traced up and down the almost faded silver scar that her lightning had caused.

It occurred to her then: she could have burned him alive, then and there.

They would later say Lady Ursa’s fire was beautiful, in a sense that a crumbling estate is beautiful, because everyone says that of women who die too soon; they are haunted by what they never admired, never appreciated, and the ugliness of her suffering becomes an elegant ghost. They would whisper, though, when the extent of her web was uncovered, in rooms they thought no words would carry, that she was as deadly as she was poised. Behind silk and fragrance, there is flame as sharp as steel. His perfect princess.

It occurred to her then: she could have burned him alive, then and there, in flames that would have been ugly and terrible and all-consuming, but instead she kept her hands still.

He had been right. She had simply wanted to please him.

Before the next morning, the names had already been erased. No one would mention them again. She rose with the sun alone and meditated without a single candle. Servants moved soundlessly around the palace and little could be heard in the prince’s gardens except a trickle from a fountain. In the morning, everything was bathed in gold. Nothing felt out of place.

A letter from her mother had arrived a month later. It was a largely dry account of affairs back on the stormy set of islands she had almost forgotten the shape of. ‘Your father sends his congratulations,’ it said, wedged in between a stream of banal gossip.

She tried to imagine the smell of mist or the sound of wind on a hilltop or her father’s voice rising with pride. She found she wasn’t able to picture it

She folded the letter in a pocket and then went to feed the turtleducks. The night before, her first assassination had been executed without a hitch, and she was going to see a production of _Love Amongst the Dragons_ that evening, put on by a troupe of former circus acrobats. She had remarked to her husband that it would probably be quite amusing.

“I am yours, my lord,” she told him, as his hand took hers behind the silk veil of the royal box, as his fingers traced the shape of that scar, as the curtain began to rise.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1\. ozai is the sort of abuser who will tear up all of your precious possessions without laying a finger on you and then act like it's all in your head because he's never laid a scratch on you. fucker.
> 
> i hate him so much.
> 
> this chapter was important to me & one of the aims of this fic is to explore this type of emotional abuse & show that abusers are not cartoonish villains, but are painfully real, even sympathetic at times... but still, that makes their actions no less monstrous and no less forgivable. something a lot of people who aren't familiar with abuse have problems with is believing someone is an abuser because 'they seem like such a lovely person!'. a lot of abusers are very good at putting up a front. i think the show establishes ozai as having this stand-offish vibe, so i'm keeping to that, but he still puts up fronts that would allow him to gaslight ursa & deny fault while still having others believe him.
> 
> can't wait until ursa wrecks his shit. 
> 
> 2\. i don't think the shady sort of politicking ursa gets up to is too out of character, given that in canon ozai asks her to assassinate the fire lord (!) and she agrees (!) and does it successfully (!). surely she's had some practice. she is, after all, loyal to the fire nation, and her husband.
> 
> 3\. i had a LOT of fun researching chinese theatre & opera while thinking up imaginary titles here. _dawn of an empire in vermillion_ is made-up. _tragedy of lady noriko_ , for which this fic is named, is reference to canon comics: Noriko is the alter-ego ursa takes in the post-canon storyline where she makes a shady deal with koh the facestealer. _tale of the flaming lute_ was vaguely inspired by tale of the pipa, a ming dynasty era drama about a wrongfully destitute and disgraced wife looking for her husband. _love amongst the dragons_ , of course, you all know. i almost quoted lady macbeth a lot in this chapter but decided against it as i'm trying to not lean too heavily on western theatrical traditions? but i also feel like taking wholesale from chinese theatre isn't true to the fire nation as an entity, i.e. what it represents fictionally. i imagine a lot of showy propaganda pieces & push for a 'new' cultural heritage that sozin has forged, that depicts a more martial culture. more wars, more battlegrounds, more brave soldiers. 
> 
> anyways, i really hope you enjoy. as always, please tell me what you liked, what you think worked well, what you thought in the comments <3
> 
> next week: iv. a hand scented like jasmine


	3. jasmine-scented hands

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **content warning:** destructive behaviour (from ozai). mentions of war, colonialism, & violence in the abstract.

**iii. princess**

Years passed like dry leaves. Easy tinder.

Sun and shade. Storm and heat. In the Fire Nation, seasons were marked by star charts, clear mathematical divisions of the sky, but all too often the coming and going of the monsoons liked to wreak havoc with anything resembling a plan or a schedule. She could recall once loving the rumble of such storms. The electric feeling of the high sun’s rain. The weight of the air after the skies had been emptied.

She did not know why she had thought something so heavy would be freeing.

“Demonstrate,” instructed her husband.

And so she did, for the sixteenth time that morning. She cleaved herself into two even pieces, and in the division between, lightning crackled, and leapt forward from her fingertips into the sky.

She slumped backwards. A lock of hair had fallen out of place. The edges of her long silk sleeves had singed slightly.

Her husband stood with his hands behind his back. He looked at her as if through a magnifying glass. “Demonstrate again,” he said, the consonants clipped, cutting.

And she would repeat and repeat the same form like she was an engineer’s contraption made of springs and clockwork and steam. Her husband watched her without more than an eyebrow creasing as her breath grew increasingly more strained, as her legs began to sink beneath her, as the cold fire burned through her. Clean, precise, almost perfect.

“Enough.”

He walked away. She was not permitted to watch him replicate her movements, to see how well he had observed, to see him do something as fumbling as a first attempt. There was an intimacy in watching another fail, another misstep; an intimacy that they lacked.

Instead, she would watch the servants exit his quarters with uneven breaths.

Forty days passed, without a storm. On the forty-first day, her husband sent her an invitation to accompany him at that morning’s practice. It was raining.

She folded herself neatly beneath the eaves and watched the water cascade from rooftop gutters into an empty courtyard. Her husband, the prince, walked into its centre seemingly unbothered by the rain pouring down.

He moved into position. Droplets fell. He pulled his hands apart, electricity crackling around his fingers. He glanced at her. He smiled.

_Crash._

Thunder shook the earth as a bolt of lightning sailed past her and her eyes widened as his hands moved into position to send another. Again. 

And again.

_And again._

In popular imagination, His Royal Highness Prince Ozai had shifted from a spurned second-favourite son to a somewhat competent political manoeuvrer in court, despite a what others called a ‘disagreeable’ character and a ‘dire lack’ of a sense of humour. Ursa could acknowledge her husband’s dignified restraint being mischaracterised as a flaw; he was like his father in this aspect. What she took greater issue with was the claim that her husband was so emotionally stunted that he had simply no understanding of passion or love.

None of those gossips, of course, had ever seen him fight off a brewing storm with lightning.

He delighted in it.

It was exciting. It was invigorating. It stunk of power. Only wisps of smoke left behind. The cleanest burn. She watched the way a spear of lightning rushed from his fingertips and she felt a chill touch the back of her neck. She could see how it could be something beautiful.

He would smile.

And so, she would smile too.

* * *

In the Caldera, there was a second, arguably more unpredictable storm that set the sages’ astronomical calculations spinning out of control. The steady rhythm of sun and shade was punctuated by the brief pauses in the Earth Kingdom campaign, in which His Royal Highness Crown Prince Iroh would return to the palace. And return he did, to much fanfare and furore, feasts and firecrackers, where sacred dates swirled around the edge of the calendar like comets pulled sharply into his orbit, revolving around the firstborn son. On his arrival, streets would be strung with lanterns and evening skies would be set alight, polished helmets of a military procession would march, and the horns would call out an anthem that celebrated triumph after triumph of ‘their General’. Festivals were held early. Holidays were called; the streets stopped, and celebrated in his name. He was the centrepiece of almost every palace event, not helped by his habit of inviting almost any soul who asked to dine with him, and had often turned a simple meal into a six course celebration with musical accompaniment, a thirty-two piece orchestra.

Her husband had fumed while the palace halls brimmed with the sounds of bells. On those evenings, Ursa accompanied him to the practice grounds, and folded herself neatly on a bench to the side while he would throw silver arcs of lightning towards the sky. His own improvised percussive accompaniment. (It was said that her prince was a rather talented musician, although he always declined to perform in public.)

The crown prince had of course attempted to interrupt these practice sessions by extending an invitation to his brother to share tea with him in private, as he did on each and every occasion that he returned. Her husband, of course, declined, as he did with every such invitation, making great pains to be less than cordial to his favoured brother. This did not deter the crown prince, however, who made an admirable show of being as stubborn as his younger brother (he was nowhere near close, and never would be as determined as a man who spent forty days in a locked room teaching himself to pull strands apart to make lightning, not once, in his life), and had embarked upon a new tactic: approaching Ursa instead.

This was really quite annoying, in Ursa’s opinion.

He had begun by urging her to address him less formally. (‘My dear Ursa,’ he had said, ‘I believe I have seen the top of your head far more often than the rest of the East Wing’s servants combined,’ and the only thing that startled her more than these words was his laughter following). He then began to insist that they better acquaint themselves over tea, then wine, then lunch or dinner, and then finally, after all those were declined, a visit to the theatre (‘I haven’t seen the opera in some while. Ozai tells me you are quite fond of it,’ he had said of it, as she hid a slight frown. She knew for a fact her husband refused on principle to speak to him of anything less than urgent, certainly not anything as trivial as the opera). He then repeatedly mentioned that his much beloved wife was ‘simply delighted’ at the prospect of meeting her properly (‘outside of stuffy formalities that I am sure that you are already too familiar with’, which she was not, since she had not been presented to court at the age of sixteen like the noble daughters of families in good standing with the Fire Lord), before mentioning that his young son had a wealth of questions he’d pressed him to ask her and he would be loathe to disappoint him (‘but I would hate to bore you,’ he added quickly, with a smile that was just shy of shameless. ‘I’ve been told that I could talk about my son until next Sozin’s comet’).

She had supplied him with soft apologies and a gentle smile; she could not, unfortunately, find the time. It was easy to say no to him. Her husband had taught her the meaning of fragile. She thought of a vase of white orchids that a courier had delivered to her that morning; she thought of the quiet shadow of the servant who sat with her at the turtleduck pond as the day broke. She said no, and she waited for the storm clouds to pass, for lightning and laughter and brighter music to fade, and for the general to go on the march again.

When the rains stopped, the air became hot and still, and the palace was as quiet as it ever would be, she found it was far more difficult to say no to his wife.

“Princess Ursa,” said the crown princess, with a sharp nod and a faint smile hovering at the corners of her lips.

She was a small woman, draped in bright silks imported from the colonies, each containing a swirling maze of pattern, tied-up half-way at the sleeve to let her hands move free – a fashion denounced as unfeminine, by some. “You wouldn’t mind terribly if I accompanied you on your evening walk, would you?” she asked.

Ursa did not mind.

It was said that romance was the reserve of theatre, and in her experience, Ursa saw little reason to disagree with that. But she had difficulty believing that the Fire Lord’s firstborn, the golden son loved so dearly by the true hand of Agni, the talk of the court whose rumoured boldness was eclipsed only by his rumoured charm, had anything less than his pick of a parade of suitable young ladies, who she could so easily picture throwing themselves at his princely feet. It was difficult to believe precisely because Iroh had not, as he occasionally was wont to do, been exaggerating in the slightest about exactly how delightful his wife was.

Her hands were carefully manicured things, painted with a soft blush of pink on the tips, and yet they swirled through the air decisively, rising with laughter, falling to make a clear-cut point. This was a woman whose hands spoke to organising committees within the Royal Ministry as much as at soirées and fashionable parties for noble wives who counted their husbands martial triumphs like painted vases while their fingertips moved around the cup of something alcoholic. This was a woman who had spent over fifteen years of her life at court. This was a woman whose slight, teasing smile contained as many layers as a twelve act classical opera.

Her husband had called her dangerous. Her husband had said that the crown princess was a dragon who hid her fangs amongst pearls.

Not that the crown princess cared one whit about what anyone’s husband thought, including her own. She invited Ursa to stroll through her personal gardens, cultivated landscapes that were being replicated in every colonial city of note, down to the tapered shape of trees, the curve of the cool lake where speckled birds would dart across, the red slanted rooftops of the pavilion that caught the glint of the sun.

“How are you finding palace life so far?” the crown princess had asked.

“Pleasant,” Ursa said. Dark eyes watched her carefully, as she considered how to phrase each answer to the question. “I have become quite accustomed to it.”

“Splendid. It’s a rather marvellous place,” said the crown princess, her hands dancing as she spoke. “This corner of the gardens is just so tranquil – I can’t quite get over it.” She stopped, and spun towards the lakeside, palms clasped together.

The water was barely rippled. It turned a warm, golden orange in the last hours of the sun. A few reddened leaves would drop into the lake, soundlessly.

Ursa could feel the distant cousin of a breeze at her fingertips. She closed her eyes.

“I would not judge you if you thought of home now and then, you know,” said the crown princess.

“The palace is my home now.”

She tilted her head. “Is that so, Ursa?” Her tone was curious, probing.

Ursa took in a slow, deep breath. She held it for twelve seconds. When she exhaled, she let her eyes flick in her direction. “Yes. This is where I belong.”

She nodded sharply.

Dragonflies flitted across the water. One could almost hear the hum of their wings.

The crown princess’ voice fell to a murmur. “If things change…” she began. “If you find yourself missing part of yourself here, there is no shame in it.” She stopped, and smiled, perhaps a jest that floated above her head, perhaps a joke she kept as a secret. “There is no shame in it, regardless of what Her Majesty, Fire Lady Ilah, might say on the matter.” She shook her head. Took a breath. Looked in her direction, at Ursa. Dark eyes still sparkling in the dimming light. “I want to say that in any case, you are welcome to confide in me, if you so need.”

Ursa felt her lips twitch. “I will treasure your confidence, and am most grateful for the offer,” she said, with a slight bow.

“I am glad to hear,” she said, with a soft smile too.

Perhaps it was a ruse. Perhaps the offer of confidence – and potentially, amongst the blossoms, the first seeds of friendship – was a ploy to pry her open and take all her secrets. Her husband warned her of as much. For all the strategic advantage this amicable relation may present, he had told her, he would have hated to see her hurt by it.

(Hands had beckoned her, before her morning walk. “Remember who you serve,” he told her. It was short, clipped, and without a smile. The servant who washed their bedsheets still rubbed burn salve down her wrists every morning.)

It did not stop the crown princess from accompanying her on her morning walk through the gardens, inviting her to morning tea in the ruby pavilion twice a week. It was far enough that she would not see lightning leap up to the sky from the practice grounds, that she would hear nothing of thunder.

“How do you like to while away the time, Ursa?”

“I walk in the gardens. Sometimes I read.”

Sometimes she read poetry about gardens and sometimes she read dense texts on the history of embroidery in the eastern archipelago and sometimes she read recently published theatre scripts. The crown princess enquired about the details of each with piqued interest.

She did not mention that she read the fundamentals of martial strategy, or how to properly look after a blade, or how the medicinal herbs native to the southern islands had lethal properties. She did not mention that sometimes she read transcripts of council meetings, unpublished casualty reports, funeral rites given to fallen soldiers.

“On good days, I visit the theatre as well,” she said, instead.

“A theatre-goer! How exciting. Ursa, I hadn’t expected you’d be so _avant-garde._ ” The crown princess said with a grin. “I’ve never been to one of those new theatre houses that have cropped up in the Caldera myself – the theatre showings they give to the Fire Lord in the palace are just so antiquated…” A hand shuts. A hand curls open. “But these new plays sound absolutely marvellous. Far more daring. Tell me, what would you recommend?”

Ursa places her tea cup down gently. “For you, I think you’d enjoy the latest production of _A_ _Fire_ _Lily on the Water._ Historical drama. Distinguished acting troupe, but new direction. Some of it in the new style of spoken theatre, as well as operatic sections.”

The crown princess cackled with laughter. “That one has a double murder in the penultimate act, doesn’t it? Patricide and fratricide, no?”

Ursa cannot hide a smile. “The fall of the Final Sun Dynasty was not a graceful one. It’s true to history.”

“All history is fiction, Ursa,” she said. “It so happens that some of it is simply more elaborate.”

They talked about pleasant things in the shade while they drank a selection of teas. Ursa’s favourite was a blend of sharp black fashionable in the Caldera. The crown princess’ favourite was a sweet jasmine picked from the tallest peaks of the Earth Kingdom, from the mountains that had yet to fall.

Sometimes, on the days they drank jasmine, she would bring her young son on their walks. A little boy with bright eyes and hair tumbling out of his ponytail would wander around the gardens, flowered in praise by every passer-by as he showed them inky swirls that spelled out his name. He’d run up to his mother, who would kiss his forehead as many times as the strokes he had drawn, while Ursa tried to hide the look of baffled shock on her face.

(She couldn't remember the last time she saw such open affection. Her husband would call him spoiled.)

When the crown princess chose the tea, she would not let another serve them. She used her own hands.

“What draws you to the theatre, Ursa?” she asked.

Ursa allowed her brow to twitch. It was the closest she let herself get to a frown. “I’m not sure I’d be able to describe it that well.”

“Try,” she said. “For me.”

She placed a hand, outstretched, on the table. Scented with the same sweet jasmine. Ursa almost lets her fingertips glide over it. It felt like too much to take.

Instead, Ursa’s hands returned to arc around her own teacup.

“It’s… when a child first hears of spirit tales, old myths of people being whisked away to play games of riddles with something twice their size and with three times as many heads… one develops this image, I suppose, of what the spirit world is like. A place of magic and wonder. A bit romantic, really, considering all the dangers that lurk within… although that’s half the draw.” Ursa pauses, to pull her cup to her lips, to take a sip from her tea. The scent fills her, as much as the taste, as much as the warmth. “That’s what the theatre is to me. That imaginary world. A curtain away from being transported to somewhere utterly spellbinding and completely unrestrained, without any limits. And I can laugh and I can cry. And there is no shame, there, not at the theatre, for it is not part of our world. And after a good performance, I feel… full, whenever I leave. Full of what, depends on the play, but full nonetheless.”

The crown princess' eyes did not leave hers as the words tumbled out. Behind them, little Lu Ten sat by the lakeside, playing with toy soldiers. Little Lu Ten hummed the beginning of a march. He traced new characters in ink: _Prince. General._ _Father_ _. W_ _ar_ _._

“I had thought,” said the crown princess, softly, "That you might like the idea of being someone else.”

Ursa's brow twitched again. This time, she really did frown. “Who else would I be?”

“I’m not sure. Who would you like to be, Ursa?”

Ursa looked from her eyes to her hand to her teacup, glazed with little blue and green dragons, back to her hand, a faintly lined palm open on the table, back to her eyes, so dark that she could fall into them. She swallowed before speaking.

“I am a princess. I have an attentive husband and a beautiful home. I couldn’t possibly ask for anything more.”

“Of course,” said the crown princess, with a warm smile. “I shouldn't have asked.”

They said nothing more of the theatre.

Lu Ten would still run rings around them, showing them fighting stances and the way he held his fists, just as the soldiers did, and wouldn’t it be wonderful when his fire came through? He would draw his own little world in sand and spell out the characters of would-be adventures: _Wulong, Yu Dao, Omashu, Gaoling. Ba Sing Se._ His eyes grew brighter as they wandered over an antique sets of armour gifted to him, son of the crown prince. They twinkled when he watched steel clash on steel.

The day his fire came in, Lu Ten dashed half-way across the royal estate to find his mother, sipping tea with Princess Ursa in the gardens, and showed her a golden crackle of flame. The crown princess’ smile was bright as a button. Her hands crumpled.

The next morning walked in quiet company as the skies clouded over and the wind rustled the trees.

“I would have probably ended up in a counting house,” the crown princess said, quickly, the words tumbling out of her, like a fierce wind, “since I'm not half bad at arithmetic, but it seems like an awfully tedious lot to have drawn. I could have been an engineer, too, as is common nowadays, but I would have much rather learned to sail, and captain my own ship. Not one of those military vessels – I'm not cut out for war, I don’t have the constitution for it. I’d rather sail the sort of ship that they write songs about.”

Ursa sat still. The only songs she could think of were about warships. The only sailing songs that Lu Ten would hum under his breath were about warships.

“I’d mark new places on a map. Then sail right past them. I would have a record of little mysteries I could hold onto, just for me, while I would sit at the stern, alone, and watch the sea surround me. There would not be a thousand hands fussing around, and there would be no lace, and no appointments. Just blue, and maybe, sometimes green.” She laughed, but it was without humour. She smiled, but it was without mirth.

Ursa said nothing.

“Is that mad? Is that absolutely crazy, Ursa?”

In the distance, she could hear something begin to rumble.

Lu Ten had showed them how he could turn a little fist into a leaping flame that morning. His mother had smiled without it reaching her eyes.

The wind whistled something sharp.

“No,” she said, softly. “No. I don't think so.”

The crown princess looked towards her, and smiled again, but it still did not reach her eyes.

Ursa imagined herself with a hand, outstretched, as water fell around them. Ursa imagined the crown princess, with shaking fingers, taking it.

A distant flash of lightning forked through sky and cleaved the world in two.

She kept her hands absolutely still.

“He told me that he’d bring me Ba Sing Se, on my wedding day,” the crown princess said. “That he’d gift me my very own kingdom.”

She shook her head slowly. She shook her head as if she wanted to shake everything that she could see and taste and touch and feel outside of her mind.

“Fifteen years. It’s been fifteen years, Ursa.”

The rains began to fall.

That evening, Ursa read a finely worded piece of propaganda remarking on the resounding success of the second siege of Omashu, a campaign that only cost six hundred dead soldiers. A number that had been censored twice over.

The rain kept falling.

There were arguments when the crown prince returned. These were hushed behind walls, held with quiet words a passing ear couldn’t quite catch, or through carefully written letters that only implied, never spoke. Ursa was not privy to these arguments but she saw how the crown princess smiled so proudly at her son, her brave little soldier, while her hands cradled the handle of a teapot with a deft grip, serving floral and honey scented teas that sat on the edge of saccharine, and every word that fell off her tongue was empty. When she laughed, it was hollow.

(The final lesson: silence was survival. It was also pain.)

It was raining the day the crown princess disappeared. She left on a ship with green sails and was never seen again.

She left a little boy behind.

* * *

The storm cleared the day after. It was bright and sudden, but the air still carried the weight of rain that had lashed out on even-tiled rooftops.

Her husband instructed her to wait by the faded chalk of the practice grounds. She watched him throw ribbons of lightning at carefully arranged sets of crockery, delicate tea sets decorated with landscapes of cities so distant as to be runaway dreams, while she kept her hands crossed in her lap. She watched the porcelain shatter into pieces.

“A coalition of army officials have approached me requesting my support in the war council,” he told her, as he smashed a delicate tea set into bits. “They seek to remove the restrictions barring those without flame to rise to the highest officer ranks. I would be interested to know your opinion of this proposition, Ursa.”

Smoke rose from the remains of a blue teapot with little painted boats brushed on the side. She thought of the sea, and wondered if there was as much solace in it as a dream.

“Who is in this coalition?”

“No one of particular importance, except for the new Minister of Justice. Former general. I believe he is the uncle, actually, of that colonel you faced in an Agni Kai.”

“Ah. Hopefully not as foolish.”

Another strike of lightning lashed out from his fingertips, breaking a set of floral vases engraved with water lilies and lotus flowers into uneven slices.

“Not even half. I had not expected to count him amongst our allies, in all honesty. He holds a decent amount of respect, despite his new appointment. I doubt he could accomplish an overturn in ancient martial tradition by himself.”

Ursa looked at the broken pieces and wondered what it would be like, to let a bird free from its gilded cage.

“Ursa?”

“The people forget that Fire Lord Sozin was once considered radical. That he broke many such traditions, for the sake of greatness. Innovation is part of our strength.”

“Indeed.”

He readied his hands again. His next target were a set of painted dolls, with bright, colourful face-paint, like characters from a traditional Earth Kingdom opera. Authentic pieces, made in Ba Sing Se. The crown princess had gifted them to her and her husband as a token of friendship.

“The campaign in the East has lasted many years. We risk fatigue amongst both the common soldiers and the officer class, if we are not careful. Allowing for select promotion could invigorate those who have the drive and discipline if not the spark.”

He smiled.

“Is this simply the line of argument you would present to the council, or are you thinking of your beleaguered father?”

He smiled. And so she smiled too. (But there was no mirth in it).

“I am not so sentimental, my lord.”

Lightning reached out and slashed a doll into two, cleaving right through her porcelain skull.

“It is about time you learned.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> oof.
> 
> i ummed and erred about including this, given that lu ten's mother/iroh's wife doesn't exist, but i think it really was for the better for it. got to include some commentary on the earth kingdom, imperialism, & the war here. i think this chapter is all about the concept of 'romance' vs. love, i suppose. and that includes a colonialist romance, the fantasy of conquest. it's something that lu ten's mother questions as she realises it won't simply be something 'distant' and 'dreamlike' for her son. her decision to leave (whether it was truly a decision, well... ursa's viewpoint has it's limits) gives us something to contrast ursa's actions to, later.
> 
> also i can't really write a long piece without gay subtext. oops! lesbians!
> 
> the concept of ozai being an accomplished musician (as well as being a reference to thunder) comes from [Echoing Refrains](https://archiveofourown.org/works/13752108#main), a fic i really like. i like having some zuko & ozai parallels because 'abuser' isn't a personality trait; i think it's important that zuko can resemble his father, while still being utterly different (because he chooses to be kind, in the end). 
> 
> a fire lily on water is a made-up title, but i was thinking of 'the peach blossom fan' (which is a famous work about the fall of the Ming dynasty) as to its general plot description. 
> 
> anyway! this chapter i've put up early because the week starting on the 10th August is [ATLA femslash week](https://atlafemslashweek.tumblr.com/) (!!), which I've written something for. didn't want it to clash too much. the next chapter will probably be up tuesday after next (because writing zuko is kicking my fucking arse).


	4. quick, impatient hands

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **content warning:** minor character death, references to in-fiction genocide (air nomads)

**iv: little prince**

Years passed like notations on a calendar. Crisp angles and careful dates. Precisely calculated. Lacking character.

There were slight changes in her trajectory, however. Her husband became more sparing with his praise. More particular. Reduced it to kernels, and then crumbs that she would pick off the floor on her knees. She broached the subject exactly once, and her husband told her with a dismissive wave of his hand that he saw no need to offer complimentary marks to anything less than exemplary work. Her work was rarely so.

The tune was different when her hands left a corpse behind. That would bring out a restrained smile. It would only last a moment, but it was long enough that she could feel her heart leap from her chest.

She watched herself take the form, the shape, as he had demonstrated with lightning. Observed, for instance, how she became increasingly critical of the theatre, finding fault in every detail, a facet she thought her husband might find amusing, but he made no comment on it. She forgot the names of servants. Perhaps she had never remembered the names of the servants, but how little sense would that make, she’d given him lists of names whenever he had wanted to punish her?

When she looked through the casualty reports from the eastern front and she would feel a slight irritation, and no more.

She saw herself shift in other ways that felt like mistakes. She noticed how she began to flinch at the sound of thunder. She noticed how much she had come to loathe taking her walks in the gardens alone.

(She walked alone most days.)

Sometimes as she walked, she saw a little prince wander through the peonies like it was fog.

(When a woman disappeared from the palace, so did her memory. Her name was swallowed and forgotten. The sparkle of her eyes would fade, in time. Past, present, and future were not distinguished between: she simply was not.)

_Hold your tongue,_ her mother had said. So she said nothing to the boy until he began to play with fire.

In her memory, her nephew’s hands were always full of fire. Quick, talented, and impatient hands with short fingers that produced flames leapt up bright and bracing. His fires were would-be fireworks, twice the size of what was expected of someone still so small. Four times the praise, lavished on him, therefore. He had more than adequate control over the direction of his free-wheeling fire that he would neither burn himself nor others, and as such, he would brandish it openly, everywhere, at every given opportunity.

She observed him wander the gardens with smoke pouring out of him. Perhaps he did not see how servants’ footsteps would quicken when they smelt ash. Princes had some difficulty recognising that subtlety, in her experience. She would have liked to think the little prince’s father, who reportedly adored everything he did, said, and set aflame, and sought to cram six months worth of untempered affection into six weeks, might have said something about that.

Shame he wasn’t there.

Ursa understood a little of that. Not what it was like to have a loving father, of course, but the sense of a father through detailed letters and the shape of handwriting more so than the cadence of a voice. Perhaps that was why the little prince was said to be so accomplished at calligraphy, despite having a dozen scribes to record every word that floated off his tongue. She had watched him write his own letters under the pavilion, by the water’s edge. She had watched his hand be corrected, gently.

No such direction, now.

It was not empathy that caused her to speak, though, when a bored eight year old boy began spinning fire into circles and loops with something masquerading as languish (which it was not; such movements required a fine degree of controlled effort). She felt little for him, at first. Living with her husband had given her the ability to turn off such sentiment like a hot water tap. She knew whose son he was.

It was simply a misstep. He got too close to the turtleduck pond one day, out leapt the word:

“Stop.”

He spun towards her. Hands almost flew over her mouth but she had been heard and the little prince’s eyes widened and it was too late to pretend she had said nothing. He looked at her like she was a ghost.

She had to swallow the instinct to bow her head. He was eight years old. An eight year old boy that was already too tall, for his still-small hands.

“If you don’t hold back,” she said, quiet and firm, “you’ll scare the turtleducks.”

He was still staring.

Slowly, he stepped backwards.

The flame fell away in an instant.

“Thank you,” she said, gently.

He gave a quick, stiff nod, then ran off in a completely different direction.

It was a beginning. Perhaps it was the moment she began to sail off-course, aligned with another set of stars. She had preferred to see it as coincidence, when her nephew returned to the pond’s edge where she liked to read things of no consequence. He would return on the days after thunder, and in his palms he would hold a fire no brighter than a candle. She would sit beside him, perhaps five paces apart, and wait.

She would let no one else see this.

When there was no one else to witness, she would copy his movements. He would make it brighter; so would she. He would make it bigger; so would she. He would want to make it leap in the air, at which point, she would say, quietly: “too much,” and bring her own fire down to the softest flicker without being stamped out. Her nephew’s hands would mimic hers and try to quell his flame without breaking it, letting a little red light shiver in the breeze.

It was their own little game.

Sometimes, she would show him something new. She’d blow her own little flame from her palms and with a flick of her fingers, cause it to float in the air, tracing shapes in the reflection of a pond, without letting it grow larger than a firefly. She’d hide a smile as her nephew’s quick, eager hands would try to copy her movements, and let his fire go, but it’d come apart into a shimmer of sparks the moment it left his palms. He’d lean in closer, his face scrunching up into a question mark as she let a second light loose from her palm, and then a third, and a fourth, and made them dance.

He’d ask her _how_ with the same tone as _wow_ and eyes as wide as saucers, and she had to smile because this was a boy whose birthday was a festival celebration across the nation, where fireworks would glitter into the air to spell the shape of his name, and yet it was the smallest light, now, that had caught his attention.

“It’s a family secret,” she had said, with a slight smile, and that must have been a misstep, because her nephew wasn’t content with that.

“Please _,_ ” he said, quietly. “Please, Aunt Ursa, please _please_ show me,” said the little prince, son of the General, grandson of the Fire Lord, who had never had to ask for anything in his life. He not only pleaded but he promised, on not only his crown but his personal honour, that he would keep his secret to the grave.

Ursa had to hide a laugh. When she agreed, he had beamed at her, like she was something wonderful.

“Imagine that…” you are flying a kite, she wanted to say. You were flying a kite, as she once had done in a near-faded memory, one without her father watching carefully, where she tugged on the string of a blue kite caught in the westerly winds from the hilltops outside of her home. Her mother had shown her how, had jerked her fingers into position without saying a word, while the long grass brushed up past her knees and winds whistled over her head. No kisses, or warm words of encouragement. Simply a demonstration.

Yet she knew that the crown prince had never had his hands corrected by sharp fingers and piercing eyes. She knew that the winds here were far too still between the monsoons. She knew that if she were even to mention it, her majesty Fire Lady Ilah would question her as to why her grandson had requested the tools for a traditional air nomad pastime, for his tenth birthday. Fire Princes did not fly kites.

Ursa paused.

“Imagine that it’s on a very long string. Imagine that the wind will carry it upwards. You’re letting the air do half the work for you.”

He looked at her dubiously. “A string? Wouldn’t that catch fire?”

“Yes, but it’s _your_ string. Also, it’s make-believe. It’s not actually there.”

His mouth scrunched up like he was considering a particularly difficult sequence of arithmetic.

“Perhaps…” Ursa began again. “Forget the string. Just imagine you’re letting it free. You’re giving it space. You can’t hold it too tightly.”

Lu Ten looked at her sceptically. “It’ll just fall apart into embers again.”

“ _If_ you hold it too tightly. And you haven’t even _tried_ yet.”

He rolled his eyes in this big, exaggerated way – when had he learned to do that? His father certainly hadn’t taught him – but he did as she asked, and summoned a little flame again. This time, he blew it off his fingertips and let go enough for it to float away.

It spun in a circle before it flickered out.

“There we go,” she said, with a broad smile that spread to his face too.

She would teach him such things. Their relationship was one of little secrets. She couldn’t hold on too tightly. He was not her son and she was not his mother and at formal occasions, Ursa with her long sweeping silk sleeves that now covered scars hidden like a knife would bow fully to him, long and low, the boy who would wear Agni’s crown, who would be the true hand of flame.

Yet by the turtleduck pond she’d show him what no tutor or teacher could in the shadow of her mother’s hands: how a flame could be so light as to glide along a breeze, or how it could be hard as stone, or ever-flowing, like a waterfall. The great-grandson of Sozin played with fire like it was the ghost of a kite dancing in the wind, and laughed like any little boy would.

Much like little monk boys in bright yellow robes might have once done.

That thought felt like a sickness. She swallowed it, and turned it into fire. Her husband commented on the quality of her flames. ‘Lacking discipline,’ he had said, without warmth.

The bitterness still rose up her throat sometimes. Secrets brought back memories she should have burned away, charred thoughts of a little girl in a library, her fingers tracing a family tree with its branches burnt back to cinders, save one. No kind uncles or aunts whose fire soared on the wind, not on her mother’s side. Sozin was a meticulous gardener.

She said nothing of this to her nephew.

_Aunt Ursa,_ her nephew would instead write, _knows all sorts of interesting things_. _I’ve been talking to her lots lately._

She said nothing of guilt, of sadness. She was breaking the unwritten rules. Straying from her unspoken role.

_A_ _unt Ursa says_ _she knows how to coax a_ _n owl_ _-f_ _rog_ _out of its hole_ _and knows where all the palace mongoose-cats like to hide. I thought she was joking when she told me to look on the_ _temple_ _roof, but there they were, all th_ _ose_ _fat_ _mongoose-cats s_ _unning themselves on top of the s_ _hrine_ _, just asking to be b_ _othered_ _._

She knew that this was a weakness. That there should be no affection. That this affection that stuck to her should taste like shame.

_(She says I_ _ have to _ _write that I did not climb up onto the roof by myself and that I made Colonel Shu hold a ladder so that I didn’t fall. I don’t see why I_ _ have to _ _write_ _this, but Aunt Ursa_ _said she didn’t want you to worry, and neither do I, so_ _.)_

She should have held him in the same quiet contempt that she did with his father, not listen attentively to his tall tales and chuckle softly when he would make childish faces at her while generals made stilted speeches at a formal banquet (he was lucky: he never got caught). Her nephew was too much like his father, in too many ways.

_Aunt Ursa,_ _like you,_ _also knows lots and lots about dragons_ _._ _Her favourite play is_ _all_ _about dragons and she_ _told me_ _she used to spend all day in the library reading about them when her dad was_ _away_ _. She told me that you could tell a dragon apart by the shape of its snout and the length of its neck, because how it breathes tells you whether it is water or fire._

Father and son. Little boys grown who laughed like the forgotten west winds, as men tumbled down like tin soldiers on their maps.

_That’s ridiculous. Water dragons don’t exist. I told her that and A_ _unt Ursa_ _gave me thi_ _s smile she gives_ _when s_ _he tries_ _to pretend t_ _hey don’t_ _know something, but she obviously does._ _But_ _I know_ _ you _ _know all about dragons, and of course you know water dragons don’t exist. (Right??)._

Two thousand, three thousand, four thousand dead. What did it matter to them? What did it cost them?

_Dear Aunt Ursa,_ wrote her nephew, ~~_I_~~ ~~ _am really very sorry_~~ ~~_I am so so sorry_~~ ~~_I am sincerely apologeti_~~ _c_ _I_ _give my most humble apologies,_ in a hand guided by his father’s, _for_ _taking your antique theatre masks_ _without your permission to play “h_ _unt the dragon_ _” in the fire-ferret dens_ _on Ember Island_ _with my cousin_ _Zuko. I sincerely apologise for_ _breaking your favourite mask and_ _upsetting my cousin_ _during our adventure_ _._ _While_ _I did not ask Zuko to accompany me, a_ _s_ _he_ _is only_ _three and a half years old, I should have taken him back home_ _t_ _he moment he_ _ran after me,_ _instead of continuing on my quest_ _with him as my trusted companion_ _._

She should never have cared for a boy whose laughter should have meant grief and headaches, leaving her and her husband to stitch the nation up while it bled fathers and sons dry.

_I really am sorry._ _Really._ _I did_ _n’_ _t k_ _now_ _the ‘fire’ in ‘fire-ferret’ was literally fire,_ her nephew wrote, in a hand that was very much not guided by his father. _T_ _hat was very stupid of me._ _I am really very_ _very_ _sorry for making Zuko cry. I didn’t mean to hurt the fire-ferrets._ _I said sorry to him already but p_ _lease tell him that_ _I am sorry (again) and_ _reassure him that_ _I understand_ _that_ _they are noble creatures and I won’t make the mistake of disrespecting them again._

While father and son went gallivanting off to play war, her husband had to push for the difficult decisions that others refused to contemplate. _The re-introduction of the draft. The reduction of the minimum age of enlistment. The introduction of free and mandatory military schooling for all subjects beneath the age of fourteen._ The new reforms were sweeping and radical; such was the cost of boyish dreams. She knew should never have cared for the boy from whose head they took shape.

She wasn’t allowed to care for him.

Not even when her nephew presented her with those broken pieces of her Dragon Empress mask, reconstructed and made whole again. Her fingers trailed across cracks that had filled with a delicate gold lacquer, smooth and imperfect. They looked like streaks of lightning.

_For my dear Aunt Ursa,_ _on your birthday, with love,_ he had written carefully.

When she enquired about the note, he gave the sort of easy smile that would get him labelled ‘a charmer’, ‘a heartbreaker’, and all sorts of other silly things people called teenagers, and said:

“What? Of course I didn’t forget your birthday. It’s literally the day after mine.”

It simply couldn’t be allowed to care for him.

She felt around the smooth corners of plain wooden box containing her worst secret, its latch still seared shut. She contemplated the box, unhinged, a traitor’s crown in its maw. How would it look to her nephew?

She never asked him the question. Instead, she invited her nephew to fire calligraphy practice. It was not a punishment, for she who was called a princess out of courtesy could not be permitted to punish a prince of the blood. It was a strongly worded _favour_ , asked of a boy who had favoured his way into hidden corners of the palace, having asked a favoured guard captain, a soldier with a soft touch for lost little soldier boys, how to pry open a locked door and open what should be kept shut. He had again, recruited her son as an accomplice.

_Sozin,_ he had tried to write, and almost burnt the page. “Careful,” she had instructed him. “You need to be delicate.”

She had him tracing the branches of her new family tree. _Azulon. Ozai._ He glanced in her direction, before the next characters were to be struck. _Zuko_.

“Aunt Ursa. The branches above your name are cut short.”

Ursa smiled at him. She gave no explanation; she owed him none.

He was not hers, after all.

He knew how to smile. He would show off this knowing smile, refined and casual, pulled with a practised ease, when she reminded him there was only one Lady and Lord in the Fire Nation. To speak of more than one was treason.

“I don’t know what you could possibly mean,” he had said. To which she had only given him a pointed look. (Perhaps it was a mother’s look.)

His favoured servants, instructors, tutors, and even his peers had taken to referring to a certain ‘Lady Ursa’. (They did not say the same of her husband. They did not even speak of him in the same breath).

When she’d pushed him for an answer, he had almost pouted, like boys his age often did when caught. Scrunched up his eyes and swallowed quickly before taking a breath. With a finger that drew flame like a soaring kite in the sky, he painted the following words in the air with fire:

_Grandmother passed two years ago. Mother left. You_ _ are _ _the only Lady in the Fire Nation. I_ _don’t care_ _what the rest think._

What could she do? She couldn’t stop him. She wasn’t his mother.

It couldn’t be allowed, to care for a boy who was not hers.

_Lady Ursa_. _I formally apologise for causing you distress during the altercation that occurred three nights ago._

“This is a poor apology. I am not the one you should be apologising to.”

He met her eyes. “I don’t care. I’m not sorry for that.”

“ _Lu Ten._ ”

Her nephew had always been remarkably perceptive, for his age. She tried not to notice how he had stopped smiling at his uncle, how he never spoke to him but in stiff formalities. She allowed herself one heavy sigh. He deflated somewhat, at that.

“I’m sorry for hurting _you,_ ” he said, in a softer voice. “For giving you cause to worry.”

She shook her head. “I just don’t understand… What were you even _thinking?_ What could possibly have inspired you to be so rash? If your father hadn’t intervened…”

There could have been an Agni Kai. The ceremonial grounds would have been swallowed by flame.

“Please, help me make some sense of this. You’re driving your father sick with worry.”

“This isn’t about him,” he snapped.

“What is it about, then?”

His hands curled into fists, and then loosened. He shrugged, and smile.

“I don’t see the point of spending years drilling form after form if I can’t actually use that power,” he said, with half a scoff.

“And you couldn’t wait the ten months before you were due to be sent to the front?”

“Boys my age are already being drafted to fight. They’re already fighting. It’s not right.”

_It’s not right. It’s not fair._ Words that were out of place in the mouth of the prince who had received almost everything he had asked for. Gone was the talk of _battle_ and _glory_ and _the nation._ The little prince who listened around the corners of the palace and watched people disappear thought he knew something about cost.

“And that’s why you decided to pick a fight with _your uncle_ , of all people?”

He sat absolutely still.

Counting his breath quietly.

Stopping the torchlight from devouring the ceiling.

“Someone hurt you,” he said, softly.

Her eyes widened.

“No,” she whispered, in shock. “No one has hurt me. There is not a mark on my body.”

He looked at her like it was painful.

“It doesn’t need to leave a bruise,” he said. “To hurt.”

How could it hurt, if he was not hers?

_My B_ _eloved and Most Lovely_ _Aunt,_ _the_ _Delightful_ _Lady_ _Ursa,_ wrote her nephew, in a traditional style of fire calligraphy, the soft singe of a character burned into a scroll, something beautiful, made with care, and fine control. _I cordially invite you to be my guest of honour at my farewell banquet._

And that had been a jolly old affair, with a bottomless cup of rice wine and far too many flushed faces, far too much feisty talk about victory and the casual spilling of blood. Ursa excused herself after an appropriate time, and stood in the shade of a corridor, from which the chatter and orange lantern-light of the fuss next door faded into a gentle echo. She was watching the moon, trying to keep her eyes dry.

“Aunt Ursa?”

Her nephew was exactly two proud inches taller than his father, and still far too tall in the way seventeen year old boys inhabit the shape of men, despite being children. He hopped up on the railing next to her.

“Yes, dear?”

He grinned at her, and leaned over conspiratorially. A hand placed against her ear. A very loud whisper.

“You’re my favourite,” he said.

“Favourite… what exactly?”

“My favourite!” Then, after Ursa gave him a dubious look: “Favourite Aunt, obviously.”

Ursa laughed. She laughed so much that she spilt her wine on the floor and almost doubled over and kept laughing, because it wasn’t wrong, if your eyes weren’t dry when you were laughing.

“I am very flattered,” she said, straightening herself. A secretive smile spread on her face as she leaned back in his direction and whispered in his ear: “You’re my favourite nephew.” _I love you too._

He beamed at her as if he was eight years old, too tall, with too-small hands.

How could she love him, if he was not hers?

_Aunt Ursa,_

_The_ _Lieutenant_ _s_ _had a bet as to whether I’d cave and use my princely privileges to get a letter sent back early. To be honest, I c_ _ouldn_ _’t give a damn (pardon my language) about what either of them th_ _ink_ _, but I wanted to walk amongst the common soldiers, g_ _et stuck in the dirt like a common soldier, and wait six weeks for postal service like a common soldier_ _._

‘ _I’m sorry I haven’t written sooner,’ is_ _maybe_ _how I s_ _hould have_ _start_ _ed_ _this letter,_ _but I’m not sorry at all. I know you’d tell me off for being so stubborn, but it’s six weeks too late now,_ _six weeks in which_ _I have since gained a new appreciation for clean boots, warm beds, and a_ _hearty_ _hot meal_ _._

_This is_ _still_ _everything I always wanted._

She loved him. She loved him so much.

_Aunt Ursa,_

_I_ _t’s been far too many days._ _Seen too much of this damn (sorry) wall._ _Still not marching home any time soon._ _I’ve been thinking about what you said about hard work_ _being worth something._ _I keep holding on to those words._ _I_ _t’s got to be worth something, hasn’t it?_

She loved him. She should not have shed tears.

_Aunt Ursa,_

_Miss you and the cousins more than anything._

She should not have shed tears. Her husband had said it was unseemly.

(She wept at the funeral. Her husband burned all the letters afterwards.)

“Lu Ten spoke of you so often,” says Iroh. Something still clings to them both as she watches steam rise from a perfectly poured cup of tea.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **sixteen year old lu ten:** i'm going to fight my bastard uncle ozai even if it is rash and stupid of me
> 
>  **sixteen year old zuko:** hold my drink
> 
> anyway
> 
> ursa begins a family trend of adopting nephews. (if you had told me ursa & lu ten would be my favourite dynamic three months ago i wouldn't have believed you for a moment). lu ten here is somewhat troubled here for obvious reasons (mum disappeared; dad isn't home much), and i spiralled off that really. in essence lu ten is always an OC rather than a canonical character, so interpretations of him vary wildly, but hopefully he felt believable in this particular setting.
> 
> we jump a little bit in chronology here because lu ten is special and demanded that attention. crown princes, so spoiled. we will shift back to something more chronological next week. it might take a little longer because the chapter is quite frankly, kicking my arse. 
> 
> please let me know what you liked, enjoyed, & thought! tell me your favourite lines or favourite moments, i always appreciate it.


	5. hands she thought she might break

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **content warnings:** implied suicidal thoughts, lots of near-fatal illness, ableism, threat of physical violence/abuse.

**v: son**

The first birth almost killed her.

She had thought that it was poetic. Ursa never had any strong desire to mother her own children. It was not a responsibility she could evade forever, of course: it was all that was expected of her as a good and dutiful wife. She would comply of course. She would have two, and exactly two, plump and healthy children, and then retire all thoughts on the matter, closing the subject like a book.

Her husband, on the contrary, showed his delight in the reverence in which he stroked her growing stomach, the pride in which he said the word _heir._ He had been lenient with her, to wait this long, for what he had always wanted, and now held her with something that could be mistaken for tenderness again. She tried to revel in his good humour. In the various celebrations that showered her with extravagant gifts and expectant eyes. In his quiet touches. She smiled faintly, and tried to quash her growing horror.

It horrified her. The purpose she was tailored for filled her up with a deep unease, akin to finding another face looking at her in the mirror. _And why wouldn’t it?_ asked the white flame, that soft voice gripped with rage. What was motherhood to Ursa except a haunting presence and unread letters? Exacting fingers that pulled you sharply into position? An invisible set of strings?

It was perfectly logical that she disliked her own reflection. That she looked for cracks. That she hadn’t been able to feel anything but that slow drip of dread furrowing beneath her skin for months. That birth would kill her felt like a forgone conclusion. Of course it would.

She hadn’t been able to think of anything else for the longest time.

The first birth was prolonged and it was agonising and it almost killed her, and her husband had watched her with expectant eyes while she was suffering.

“A weak child,” a man had told her husband, as she was fading.

_**A weak child,** _ _said a man without a face, while she lay in the thrum of a fever, in a sunless place that turned inside-out into a flooded bed that had sprouted fists full of white reeds. A flock of moon-birds flew overheard at pace, two beaks each._ _**And yet it won’t stop crying,** _ _they said to each other. She arose and followed as their fallen silver feathers turned to d_ _ust_ _, until she reached the river of ash from which the white reeds came._ _**It was lucky,** _ _whistled one._ _**It was lucky to be born,** _ _whistled another._

‘ _Am I dying?’ she had tried to ask, but there was no answer from the reeds, nor the moon-birds._

_She sat at the river’s edge and waited. She watched the shifting ash. Across the river, a two-headed boy perched on a branch of shadow. He had the long legs of a heron, that dangled in the river and danced in the white smoke._

‘ _Are you a spirit?’ she asked the heron-boy._

_He did not answer. He spoke in echoes._

_**Do you know who you are?** he said, his words rising like the smoke. **Is it who you ought to be?**_

_She had no answer for him._

Five days later the fever broke. When she woke, her husband was not there. She was presented then with a child that had been named by choosing appropriate characters from a pre-selected list. A boy. He had been diagnosed with a string of ailments that boiled down to this: her son was a weak, sickly thing, and would probably not last past his first few years.

“Do not be sentimental,” she was told, as she held her son for the very first time.

His hands were so small and soft that she thought she would break them. If she clung too tightly, she might crush them into pieces.

In her exhaustion, she began to cry.

* * *

Her husband began to regard her in a different fashion. His eyes narrowed. What few smiles might have been vanished.

She had almost died to give him a son, and he regarded her with disgust.

It was all perfectly logical, of course. She was a woman of exceptional breeding who had failed to deliver on the qualities for which she was selected: her prodigious ability. In that sense she was less than useless.

It might not have even bothered her, if he hadn’t regarded her son in such a manner as well.

Her husband would not speak of him. He would not look at him, touch him, or enter his nursery; any acknowledgement on his part was a strained formality. ‘The child,’ he referred to, if it must be referred to at all.

(“A weak child,” he had spat. _Zuko,_ she had wanted to say. His name was Zuko.

“Please. Just give him one year.”

“He will die regardless. This display is wasteful.”

She fell to her knees.

“ _Please._ Please don’t – _please,_ my prince, my lord, _Ozai_ – I will give you another child. I will give you the perfect child, I will… just… please, don’t take him from me.”

He was quiet, for a while.

“I will consider your words.”)

She did not have the time or space to wallow. A small child depended on her. A small child’s hands grasped at the empty space between them.

She would close the space, scoop her son up into his arms and cradle him. She would gently sway around a darkened room humming the remains of melody, a crumbling folk song that she did not know had crossed generations for her grandfather to teach it to her mother, that had been passed along in fragments, sung beneath the breath in the sunlit rooms with dark corners in which she wasn’t supposed to be hiding. She did not know where this song was from, but it was warm and it was soothing.

She sung his name softly, like a prayer to the unknown. _Zuko._

* * *

Her husband, who was ever lenient and merciful regarding his treasured wife’s follies, had considered her words carefully.

(“The next child,” he had said, with a hand on her stomach. “Will need to be exceptional.”)

And perhaps her son might be acceptable. The boy would need to prove himself capable, first, of course. Then, he may be amenable, but only then. Her lord would need an heir and a spare, after all.

(“I want what is best for our family. I will certainly not abandon it for the front, for a facade of glory.” He touched her hand. “I will be here, stay by your side, and I will watch over our family.”)

She, of course, would need to be nothing less than the perfect mother.

(“As expected,” he said, without a smile.)

And so she would need to get to work.

The Fire Nation did not smother the embers of their young. She did not lock her son behind a door with a paltry nursemaid, as if he was the object of shame, the scorn of a nation that idolised the strength of its flame. She would not have her son be shackled or softened. Her son _was_ capable, and she would not meditate by a dwindling flame in a cold room adjacent, as if he was about to perish.

She would not act as if he were already a fading memory. She announced his existence to the world as if it was a triumph.

She insisted on a regimen of sunlight, exercise, and activity. She would take him with her to the gardens, show him every blooming flower, every colourful fish in the water, and name them. He would be introduced to every member of Royal Household as was proper: every courier, cook, and clerk, every captain, every chamber maid, would know his name, and bow to their littlest prince. Noble wives would attend tea ceremonies in the ruby pavilion, hosted in his name, and they would bring gifts of fragrance and vases engraved with phoenix feathers, while her son sat quietly, clutching his favourite silk blanket embroidered with butterfly-swans and drakes of different colours. A portrait artist and a calligrapher were both commissioned, and painted his likeness and his name like a stream surrounded by the constellations as they aligned with his day of birth. She kept the scroll in a glass case in a corridor where it could be clearly seen.

Every instance said: _look._ Every instance said: _here he is._ He would be seen, and he would be seen worthy.

(Her husband’s eyes lingered on her neck, over her shoulder. They were never far behind.)

She even found it in herself to look past quiet resentment when her brother-in-law announced he would return from his tour six weeks early in order to bounce his new nephew on his knee with a twinkle in his eye. The fanfare, for once, was appreciated. Her own nephew had been at his side, and looked at her son with something between bafflement and astonishment. Ursa had to swallow a laugh.

“You can touch him, you know,” she said, after the crown prince had rushed off to attend to some important meeting or delegation. “I promise that he won’t shatter.”

She brought her son to their meetings by the turtleduck pond on the days she knew her husband was occupied with the war council. Whenever her nephew asked if he could play with Zuko, the answer was always _yes._

He was capable. It did not matter that in between these elaborate appearances, he was stricken by sickness, and could not leave his bed for days at a time. It did not matter that he was often tired, his mobility limited, that he was prone to faint. It did not matter that his words were late to come, stumbled over, spoken quietly, if at all.

She would be there, waiting. The perfect mother.

* * *

One day, he turned away.

“Zuko, my darling,” she said, as she brushed his hair from his eyes. The sun had already risen.

He turned away.

“Zuko,” and she would keep her voice light as a forgotten breath, her hands gentle, “It’s time to get out of bed–”

“No.”

Ursa frowned. He was capable. She needed to show him that he was capable. She needed to prove, with every faltering step, that he could take another. The world needed _to see_.

“Zuko, my darling, please, it’s important to get ready–”

He scrambled beneath his blanket, clinging on to the soft edges.

There were days where she would have kept a playful edge glinting in her voice, and moved to gently tickle him out of place, and beneath the depths of those covers he might have spluttered into laughter. Perhaps he might been gently goaded out with the promise of seeing the turtleducks, a game to which there was a reward.

“ _Zuko,_ ” she snapped.

A misstep.

“ _Can’t,_ ” he choked out.

Her voice lowered. “Zuko, you _can_. I know you can. You just need to try a little more.”

He turned around. He curled up into a little ball. He pulled the blanket tighter.

She knelt. Holding in a sigh (she would be patient), she said softly, “Zuko – my darling, this is important. We have to meet important people today. We can’t keep them waiting forever.”

There was a long silence.

“Zuko, please. Try it for me?”

She then did something terrible. With a gentle hand, finger by finger, she prised his hands from his blanket. She pulled it down, to reveal his face, and put that gentle hand on his cheek, pulling his face towards her.

His eyes were flooded with tears.

“Oh, _Zuko_.”

She could have been perfect.

“Oh Zuko, _I am so sorry_. I shouldn’t have – No Zuko, it’s okay. We don’t have to today. I’m… I shouldn’t have. _I’m sorry_.”

If she had loved him like a mother should, she would not have cradled him. If she had loved him a mother should, she would have continued to push him forward. A true flame thrived beneath the heat of the sun.

But she was a weak woman and a poor mother.

She let him stay.

(She thought of what her husband might say. She thought of how precisely he would enunciate the word ‘disappointment’. She thought of his hands.)

Yet, as she thought about the way her son’s hands, small and clunky, that shifted awkwardly in a language of their own as he tried to speak, that still clung to the edge of that blanket, she felt her stomach twist.

She loved her son. There was no good reason to, but she did anyway.

* * *

The next time he had had said no, she stroked his hair softly. “You know you can’t always say no,” she had tried to explain. “People expect things of little princes.”

But she let him have the morning, at least. They’d compromised on the afternoon.

This time, she told her favoured servants an appropriate excuse to thread through the palace. Lest others begin to seed gossip, asking the wrong kinds of questions.

(A weak woman and a poor mother. As expected, he would say, without a smile.)

It was an unconventional use of an intelligence network, she supposed. To protect not a lord, nor its nation, but instead a little boy who was learning to be gentle.

* * *

She slowly learnt how to bend the rules as far as she could before they would break. She walked a delicate line beneath those still-expectant eyes but she would not shatter. This was yet another performance. For Zuko, she would put on the most elaborate and demanding performance of her life, as she became adept at the art of what her nephew liked to call ‘rulebending’.

(Perhaps she began to revel in it.)

On the days where she would bend the rules around her son and postpone all the worries of the world to stay by his bedside when he was sick, she would rifle around the restrictions of the royal archives and bring him a hoard of stories.

(It reminded her of her old library, of her mother’s disapproval as her fingers stuck in places they shouldn’t be.)

She’d begin by plucking the most whimsical from theatre scrolls and boil them down to the fundamentals: brave, bold-hearted fire princes who sought to lead battles, cunning generals who sought to usurp them in turn, wise ladies who carried the weight of dynasties behind them in a slither of gold pinning their hair in place. Often, these were fantastical adventures, other times silly romances such as _Love Amongst the Dragons,_ all comprised of stock tropes and predictable lines that she would have considered the height of tedium before seeing her son delight in them.

“Again!” he would say, and he’d flap his hands, excitedly. _Again_ _and again_ _,_ they said.

And so he would squeal as she rasped her way again through the villain’s lines, twisting her voice into something odd and sharp, as she became the wicked dragon-slayer, lamenting his loss before he would be swallowed by his own flames. Clearly, His Royal Highness had an appreciation beyond his years for the subtle humour of an ironic death scene. She was, of course, showing her son the original version. Such heinous propaganda would not be permitted under Sozin’s enlightened reign, but she respected the intelligence of her young son enough to present to him what would later be redacted and erased.

(The day after the fifth rendition of _Love Amongst the Dragons_ , she learnt his favourite colour was blue. She kept that between herself and her son, much like her smiles were: secrets.)

They did not always re-enact theatre. Other days, after she cancelled every committee meeting on account of ‘a sensitive matter requiring my personal attention,’ where she’d tell him some of her favourite stories: myths from before the time of the Fire Lords. These dreamlike tales told of sages that would riddle with troubled spirits in the water, of the first sailors who worshipped the stars they charted, of serpents the size of islands who slept beneath stormy seas.

“ _Dragons?”_ he asked. He’d spent a whole week once trying to fit the word _dragons_ into his mouth, trying to curl his tongue around all those clustered consonants. It was now every other word he spoke.

“Not quite.”

Lacking dragons, her son had decided they were perfect lullabies, and elected to sleep through most of them. She’d tell him these as her fingers curled in his hair, as His Royal Highness drifted away on her lap. There was no accounting for taste, it seemed.

The best days, though, were when she told general’s wives that ‘the urgent news had reached her from the front’, and on those they’d draw their own stories, pulled from various maps and landscape studies she had hand-selected from the cartography section. From the comfort of his room, she’d show him the world through inky coastlines and blended watercolours as he shaded something new. She wondered whether he would grow into throwing _whats_ or _whys_ at awkward intervals, whether a prince would ever ask something that tasted like treason, or whether the correct shape of the nation would always appear to be perfectly logical to him.

(“Why is the world divided into four?” she had once asked her mother, as she looked quietly at her father’s maps, peppered with regiments’ flags and toy boats. It was the wrong question to ask.)

Her son did not use his words but instead favoured his hands to ask such things. He threw himself wholeheartedly into the art of map-making, the perfect picture of determination on his little brows as he painted the corners of their world with new shades. A masterpiece was surely in the making.

He announced its completion by putting the cartographical reconstruction an inch away from her face. Two small hands held up a world bursting with colour, brimming with bright yellows and watery blues and deep greens and new colours too – violets and oranges and pinks – outside of the boundaries of coastlines and nations. At its centre, on a little boat, sat a boy and his mother, with a royal entourage of turtleducks.

There was no father in the picture.

(This would all be corrected in due course. In the years to come he would see the world in shades of brilliant red, and the tall back of his father would be the pivot around which the sun revolved.)

He looked up at her. His hands were always such expressive things, curled up like question marks, that would have given away what he was feeling even if his face hadn’t spelt out the word ‘unsure’.

She stroked his cheek, and kissed him on the head. “It’s so lovely, Zuko. You must have worked very hard.”

He nodded, and burst into a bright smile. What a bold thing.

She did not know how to explain that she would need to hide this from his father. Instead, she told him she would need to keep it safe, as with all her precious treasures. In amongst fragments of crockery and burned letters.

She wondered, too, when she would have to teach her son how to seal away the warmth of his smiles and the questions in his hands, so his father couldn’t take them from him either.

* * *

Her son fell gravely ill again. He could not leave his bed and she could not leave his bedside.

The first day, she could handle. The second was a stretch. By the third, she had run out of expertly-woven excuses and she found she could not leave him, not even to present the threads of an explanation to her husband as his patience thinned.

(And she was tiring of decorum, of correct behaviour.)

“You coddle him.”

The accusation was cold. She could not meet her husband’s eye.

_I protected him,_ she wanted to say. She couldn’t get the words out.

“You’ve _coddled_ him, and this is the result.” An accusing finger, at her son. “Weakness.”

She strained to breathe. She fell to her knees.

“Disgraceful.”

(The sound of thunder. The sharpness of a broken vase. The sickly scent of burn salve.)

Her husband moved to strike.

(The scorch marks. The scars. The shape of his hands.)

But he was not going to strike her.

(A weak woman. A poor mother.)

She stood up, her legs shaking, and moved in front of her son.

“Not him,” she said, and each word was like a bruise being made, but she would say them anyway. “Anything but him. _Anything else._ ”

“ _Ursa.”_

“I would rather you hurt _me_ , than him.”

He stopped.

For a moment, she wondered if he would strike her down, and yet she did not move despite how everything was trembling now.

Then, he sighed, and the whole world took a breath.

He lowered his hand, for a moment, before it shifted into a softer position, and reached out towards her face, and gently brushed her cheek.

Later, they would speak. Later, he would tell her that out of misguided kindness for her, out of love for her (and she stilled a shudder at that strange word, love, that sounded foreign on his lips), he had let her keep up the charade. He had known, of course, her ‘excuses’ were flagrant lies. He was not unobservant. He was, however, tiring of the theatrics, the perfect act.

He would take her hands in his and tell her in no uncertain terms that he would not tolerate weakness.

In that moment, with his hand on her cheek, though, he said not a word. In that moment, he simply looked into her eyes.

His touch was still hot.

* * *

The sages instructed her on how to deliver a mother’s funeral rites for a sick child, and had entrusted her with words of mourning.

She discarded them. She did not want to keep vigil.

Instead, she read to him. She told him about the first Fire Lord.

She did not trust in spirits. For all the superstition surrounding the misty southern isles, her mother had kept her clear of shrines and temples and offerings like they were omens in of themselves. She tried to put her faith in what she could see. She tried to put her faith in the golden flame that towered above a powerful man’s head.

She spoke in a quiet voice of warring islands and nations that were made whole by the fire of one man. That beneath his blaze, all would be united. There would be no more self-declared island principalities nor petty pirate kings nor warrior-sages who raised armies and razed villages, walking to their own codes of honour. All would kneel, under one flame, one man, one lord. One hand, chosen by Agni.

It was a story she had come to know well. The first Fire Lords were near-mythic figures which she had seen depicted in countless productions, some traditional, some modernised, some blatant propaganda, all of which seemed to stir something in her husband. He would speak afterwards of the strength of that the first of a dynasty possessed. Of how the Fire Lords did not divine their right to rule through a trail of a watered bloodline, but through the power of their flame. There would only be one crown, and the history of that crown was contest, conflict, and bloodshed. The strong fought to wield it. The weak were smothered beneath them.

She thought of how her husband often spoke of such strength with the awe others spoke of faith. The more she watched her son, the more she questioned how he could not see it in this room, beneath all the silken trappings and gilded edges, in the shallow breathing of a child.

Perhaps she was failing her son. Perhaps she should have submitted her son to some archaic trial by fire, left her child to commune with the flames in isolation, endure or to die. Perhaps that would be the greater mercy. Yet watching him struggle now with the sickness that racked him, she felt herself flooded with all sorts or wrong questions. Had he not endured enough? Was he not already being tested? What purpose could more suffering entail?

She spoke of a man to which the whole world would kneel to while her son struggled to breathe, and felt her faith waver like a shrinking flame.

Why was her son not enough?

* * *

The quietest day passed with only a whimper.

The day after, she began to sing again.

* * *

She had given her husband all her loyalty. A fountain of it, and yet she had more of it, still to give, to cut into pieces served on a platter, for her lord husband. She would not bring shame to her name. She would be loyal.

Her loyalty was her husband’s. But all her love? All her love, though, that would go to Zuko.

She continued to sing his name like a prayer.

* * *

The day came where Prince Zuko rose with the sun again. His mother asked him if he wanted to see the turtleducks after breakfast. He said yes. She ruffled his hair and gave him the sort of smile that is meant to be shared, and left the room to take in the sunlight. She slid open the door.

Curled up outside was a little girl who had been adamant that she would _not_ fall asleep that night, _not_ even a wink, while she was waiting for her dozy brother to come out and play again. She would slip out of bed (after her mother told her to stay put, of course), and wait patiently. A quick study, she was. That she managed to place her ear to the wall and catch pieces her brother’s uneasy breathing, or her mother’s tuneless singing, even slipping in and under their favourite blanket once or twice while Ursa had fallen asleep if she was lucky, well, she would keep that between them. She deserved her secrets.

She was snoring softly. A servant had left a blanket for her.

Oh, Azula.

How could she ever forget?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is actually the first half of the chapter - I wanted to put Zuko & Azula together, but this chapter really is doing my head in, and I'm tired of looking at this, so I've split it up and put it up as it is. As usual, no beta, and I haven't edited this as carefully as usual. I hope you're able to enjoy it.
> 
> Ableism, imo, is a core part of Zuko's narrative, even if it's not explicitly stated, as Ozai demands and expects things of Zuko beyond his current capability and punishes for it. I think one interpretation of 'my father said I was lucky to be born' is a literal reading - that Zuko almost died being born/as a child, and I think it's one that explains why Ursa might spend more time with Zuko & give more attention to him (and conversely, why she might end up neglecting Azula), and that's what I've chosen to do here. Additionally, I really love autistic Zuko as a headcanon so I've also thrown it in here.
> 
> I wanted to show the flip-side of the poor parenting showed by Toph's parents in canon, who are over-protective and assume their child is helpless, through Ursa and Ozai here. Ursa tries to insist Zuko is completely normal and can do everything a normal child can do despite often being sick, and this can actually be really damaging for a disabled or chronically ill kid, being constantly pushed beyond their capability and being constantly exhausted and tired, and can cause feelings of failure and frustration and really hurt a kid's self-esteem. Ursa here is trying to walk a line between what is demanded of her child vs. her child's well-being, emotionally and physically, and I don't think she gets it right at first, partially because Ozai is breathing down her neck, partially because she believes in a lot of the ruling ideology about strength and weakness (and Ozai's belief in that is pretty much canon, he spends the whole of his battle in Sozin's comet going on about how despite his capability for strength Aang is weak, etc.). In order to love Zuko properly she has to begin challenging and questioning that. I think a commenter mentioned about how the personal is political in this fic and that's absolutely a through-line I think throughout all of these chapters, but particularly here it comes into play.
> 
> Also! baby azula!! don't worry more of her is coming next chapter. how *could* Ursa forget her dear daughter? :)
> 
> One last thing - want to shout out [the only hope; or else despair](https://archiveofourown.org/series/696897) series of fire nation royal family kidfics which i've taken inspiration from at a couple of points. Reading them really helped me to keep going with this chapter & the next.


	6. perfect hands

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **content warning:** emotional abuse (from Ozai to both his children, but also, from Ursa to Azula) and implied physical abuse (from Ozai to Zuko). mentions of hypothetical animal cruelty/abuse. this is the heaviest chapter I have written so far, please look after yourselves.

**vi: daughter**

The second birth was simple. Without complications. Practically textbook.

(It hurt, of course.)

“She is perfect.”

It should have been a forgettable moment, that would fade from memory along with the wretched pain. She watched her husband’s fingers softly brush her daughter’s. She watched him, almost hesitantly, take them for the first time.

“Perfect,” he repeated. It was a reverent whisper, as much as it was a list of demands. Her daughter’s hands would be perfect, and they would never be her own.

* * *

  
  


She clung on to the memory of those first few years like they were not shards of glass but still grains of fine sand.

Before.

A child is not born perfect. Children are messy and put their feelings everywhere and cannot contain themselves into neat little squares like ‘princess’ or ‘prodigy’ or ‘girl’ (yet. A good mother ought to put them in their place, thread a needle with a lightning strike to fit them properly, pull tighter on the string.)

But she wasn’t a very good mother, was she?

What the world would consider her daughter’s greatest flaws, the things she would need to chisel around later, were that she was loud and boisterous. Born with a good set of lungs on her, and _how_ they sung, half the world knew she was there (a triumphant declaration, her cries, _I’m alive, I’m alive,_ her uncle had called her ‘an aspiring opera singer’, to which Ursa hid a grimace behind a pleasant smile.) She was a bright little chatterbox who had gone from bawling to babbling before you could say the word ‘precocious’, an endless fountain of verbose energy that ran rings around everyone who dared to catch her (or insinuate, for just a moment, she was anything less than clever). Her favourite syllables to trumpet out, however, were very simple:

“Zuzu!”

She’d belt out the beginning of her brother’s name and all the peacockrels preening on the lawns would scatter and caw as she raced to the ponds where he sat with his mother. She laughed as they fluttered in her wake. Her voice was the largest, the liveliest, and _would_ be heard by all in the gardens.

“Zula, wait – stop — get _off_ me—”

And then she would scream, and it sounded joyous. 

Her father would cut that short.

  
  


There was a time before Azula could touch the sun where all she seemed to want was her big brother. The moment she could stand she was peering from behind cracks in the doorways and slinking past her mother’s skirts to catch a glimpse at the boy who spent half his time hiding inside, the boy the whole world seemed to revolve around. What made him so special?

“Zula, let go.”

“No.”

“ _Zula_.”

Ursa frowned, as she did too often with her daughter, even then. 

“Azula, be _gentle_ with your brother,” she warned.

Gentle. Could she be gentle, this little wildfire, in this splendid palace of fox-vipers? She had teethed on the most abrasive things. Precious metals and sharply cut gems.

“But I want to _play_. No one plays with me.”

“Oh, Azula,” said Ursa, shaking her head. “You know that’s not true.”

Did she shake her head like it was nothing? Did she shake her head as if she wanted it out of her mind? Holding a sigh, a breath she shouldn’t have taken, wondering when and why she had started this game, a balancing act, juggling her children like they weren’t precious things?

She’d place a hand on her son’s shoulder as his hands circled each other in waiting, just a gentle touch. He’d look away from the shadows of clouds, and towards his sister. 

“Ok, Zula. Come on. Let’s play.”

And she would chase him across the gardens again as he spun together some daring escapade, some make-believe adventure woven in between the lines of a theatre scroll. She was always the hero, of course. He would harmonise to her tune, playing the victim or the villain or the co-conspirator or whatever she wanted him to be (she had the final say, obviously), to her clever little heroine, who somehow always knew how to outfox her brother’s lines.

She wasn’t always able to catch him, though, in part due to her little legs running out of steam, but her son had learned early how and when to lose graciously. His sister had to win of course. She was perfect. Besides, he wouldn’t let the story end without the hero’s triumph, victorious, undefeated. He appreciated a good narrative.

  
  


Her daughter would return to her mother’s side with the most awful tangles in her hair. She’d cry if Ursa tried to brush them out instead of a maid.

“It _hurts._ It hurts when you do it.”

And sometimes, Ursa would let it go and shake her head fondly. 

  
  


Before her daughter touched the sun, she was still a little wildfire, still chasing her brother’s hand as they raced along the waves, still clinging onto her brother’s blanket when thunder roared above their heads, still trying to leap onto her brother’s back (unsuccessfully, he managed to wriggle out of her grasp, though there was usually a great deal of squealing involved on both sides) when her father’s shoulders were not available, Ursa could still afford to let a thread run loose.

Her father’s shoulders. That was her daughter’s proper throne, where in her youngest years she could be found under Ember Island’s sunsets, where the sea would soften them all into something approaching warmth. From atop her father, her hands would upwards towards the fading light.

_‘Almost there,’ he would tell her softly, ‘You can almost reach it.’_

  
  


She still had time for her mother’s stories then. One day, Ursa told her son and daughter a tale about a little lost fire-bird.

(“That’s another word for phoenix.” “I _know_ it’s a phoenix, dum-dum.” “ _You’re_ a dum-dum.”)

The original tale spoke plainly of a little boy and his father and a well-pruned orchard. Ursa hadn’t cared much for this, and changed it instead to a boy and his mother with the most plentiful garden one could imagine, brimming with ever-blooming flowers, full of birdsong, fruit rich and ripe.

(“Mangoes and pears and coconuts.” “And dragonfruits.” “ _Dragonfruits?”_ “There’s nothing wrong with dragonfruits!” “Name a fruit _without_ dragon in it.” “… Papayas.” “ _Papayas?_ You like _papayas_ Zuzu?” “Yes, I _like_ papayas. What? Stop _laughing._ ”)

The beginning was always the same. The boy had gone adventuring in those wonderful gardens but on his way home, in the gold of fallen leaves, he found a little fire-bird. At this point, Ursa would illustrate, and with a gentle movement of her wrists, produced little wings of flame, a fiery feather on each finger, that shifted from red to gold to white as she fluttered her hands.

Her children watched attentively. They always liked that part.

The boy noticed the fire-bird was little more than a baby, and not only that, it was alone (and her son mouthed the line along with her, _it was alone_ ). And what would happen, she would ask them, if the baby fire-bird was left alone in the wilds in the night? (“It would get eaten!” “It would die.” “Getting eaten _means_ dying _._ ” “You can die without getting eaten.” “ _Obviously,”_ she had said, this week’s new favourite word.) The boy, in this story, was a kind, noble soul, and had resolved to take care of it when no one else could, and took it under his wing. When he got home, he decided to show his mother.

They nodded, at this point, in agreement. Mothers knew best.

In the story, the mother was astonished and amazed as her little boy showed her a little fire-bird cupped in his hands. (“Phoenixes were rare, even back then.” “Shh! I’m trying to listen, Zuzu.”) The mother decided that it would be best if they kept it, for the wilds were a dangerous place, and took it from his fingers, (and she showed them this, the little flames dancing around her hand being plucked one by one). She made a home for it, but it was not a simple abode. She would have nothing but the best for such a marvellous creature, and fashioned the most fantastic cage of gold for where it would reside.

Ursa would then begin to describe this gilded home in great detail, describing grand bedrooms and banquet halls and gardens all made of gold, the most stupendous palace they could imagine – and a prince and a princess had _quite_ the imagination, regarding that point, and would get carried away in elaborate descriptions.

(“… And there _has_ to be a duelling ground. In case of an Agni Kai.” Her daughter nodded firmly in agreement. The phoenix was an honourable creature, who would understand the sacred ritual of such a duel.)

In short, the cage the mother constructed was simply a paradise. What bird could not prosper there?

And yet.

She gestured with the littlest finger. The flame running along it began to quiver, and soften to a gentle red. Eventually, it vanished.

They gasped.

She described how in her desperation, the mother made the cage more and more elaborate, adding golden forests and gilded lakes and waterfalls in the colours of the falling sun, all sorts of impossibly fanciful, gorgeous details to this ever-expanding paradise (“… eleven fountains, twelve throne rooms, and thirteen sets of stables.” “For the dragons.” “Yes, for the dragons.”)

It did not work, of course. Another feather vanished.

Nothing the mother did helped, of course. They listed more rooms, more features, more elaborate and fanciful luxuries. The fire dimmed. No matter what the mother did, the fire-bird was only getting weaker, and feather by feather, it approached closer to death. 

Her children watched quietly as finger by finger, the flames flickered, shrunk, and fell away.

“What happened?” asked her daughter.

Ursa showed her final index finger. The flames dancing around it vanished.

“It died.”

The mother looked into the cage, and all that was left was ash.

“It _died?”_

Her son, who had heard this story before, nodded affirmatively. He liked this ending. It was simple, and to him, the most poignant. Anything less wasn’t as meaningful. He believed there could be a lesson in a tragedy.

But her daughter didn’t agree. Emphatically. Her daughter, who longed for the romance of an adventure, thought it was _wrong_. She wanted something bold and righteous. Her daughter wanted the boy to take action. She wanted the boy to see past the his mother’s pity, to pry open the door to the cage, and to let the little fire-bird fly free.

“And how could it fly without any feathers?” asked her brother.

“He’d set it on fire again.”

“That’s not possible.”

“Yes it _is!”_

“–It’d just die again from the fire.”

“No it _wouldn’t! It wouldn’t!_ You don’t know _anything, stop pretending!_ ”

Little flames jumped from her fingertips.

The candles in the room flickered and jumped up to twice their height – before snuffing themselves out.

Everyone fell quiet.

Zuko glared at his sister, who was wet eyes and trembling, angry hands, and a hoarse voice in a dark room. His dear little sister who liked his stories very much, who had just held fire for the first time. He should have been overjoyed.

He stood up, walked out the door, and slammed it shut behind him.

“ _Zuko!_ ” Ursa yelled. “Get back here now! Zuko!”

He did not listen.

  
  


Her son had not summoned a single flame in his six-nearly-seven years, something his father liked to remind him of in the same breath as the word ‘disgrace’ as he told him to hold his hands still and look at his eyes directly while he was speaking to him, to show some manners for once. Her son would hold his face still while his father spoke and break afterwards, where Ursa would chase after him and help him put the pieces back in place. She would calm him, soothe him, tell him that it did not matter when his flames would come (a lie, of course, gently told), that she would love him regardless ~~and that he ought to apologise to his sister, that he loved his sister, didn’t he? Wasn’t he happy for his sister? Couldn’t he be happy for his sister?~~. She loved her son. She’d do anything for her son.

  
  


But she loved her daughter too, didn’t she?

  
  


(Did she forget? That she loved her daughter? That her heart ached for her daughter?)

  
  


She held her daughter close as she stumbled over her words in the moments before she chased after her son.

“He… he…” and she couldn’t finish the sentence.

They would not have many moments like this. Moments where she’d wrap her arms around her daughter, with sleeves long and trailing, a secret blanket for her, and shush her gently as her daughter tried not to cry, tried not to bawl, tried to keep her tongue in control, because she wanted to be _brave,_ she wanted to be _strong_.

But she was just a little girl.

Her daughter would learn in time how to hold her tongue. When and when not to speak. Her father would file her tongue down until it was a precise little blade that would only leap out to cut someone down with words copied from her father’s phrasebook.

She would not need a mother. She would not _want_ a mother.

  
  


But this was before.

Ursa sung to her too. She sung the quiet beginnings of a folk tune that flew over with her from the southern islands, once untouched by soldier’s marching songs, and she let fiery feathers grow from her fingertips again, let them flutter in the breeze. Her daughter listened to her mutter off-tune, and watched as the little fire-bird flew free, imagining the cage in their minds ablaze, for just a moment.

Her daughter’s hands, normally bold, strident, moved with hesitancy as they reached out to catch the embers they left behind.

Her husband’s glee had been as keen as a knife. He had kept his face blank, and watched his daughter cold, expectant eyes as she knelt before him. She presented a warm little candle-fire in her fingers.

He let the flame dance on her fingertips for a breath too long. 

_“In… and out.”_

_A servant pulled tightly at a tangle in her hair. She flinched, a quiet little yelp escaping her, a sudden gasp._

_Her mother frowned as if she had ruffled her favourite ornamental flower arrangement. “You must remember to keep your breathing even. No matter how much pressure is placed on your shoulders._

_“If you seize up, your fire will vanish. There was no room for forgiveness at Sozin’s court. There will be little room at yours.”_

“ _Zuko,_ ” he snarled suddenly, his son’s name spat out like something revolting. Her son, whose eyes had been wandering around a forgotten corner of the room, sat up stiff and straight with a sudden breath that he had forgotten to take. “Observe. You could actually learn something from this.”

He looked back to his daughter. She had kept her eyes in the correct place. 

_“I suppose I ought to tell you that you look beautiful, shouldn’t I?”_

_And her mother laughed, and it sounded as bitter as it did mournful._

“A prodigy.”

Her fire shined a little brighter, at the praise. 

“It seems I will need to inform the Fire Lord immediately.”

She remembered wanting to place a hand on her daughter’s shoulder, but she could not reach her.

  
  


_She remembered the kettle coming to a boil. She remembered a hand on her shoulder, holding her back._

  
  


When his daughter began bending at an age that marked her a prodigy while his son had yet to produce a single flame, her husband’s glee was as keen as a knife (a double-edged blade, his delight and his disappointment). Her son would come to know its taste well (but so too, would her daughter).

Ursa had always preferred to imagine it had a single sharp edge, like the _dao_ blades her father liked to collect off dead generals and put beneath a glass cabinet, jade and gold wrapped around the pommels. Ursa had always preferred to imagine it was faced away from her.

 _Remember your promise,_ he had once whispered into her hair, when she was with child again, under the curling leaves of a pear tree through which speckles the sun shone. _You will give me a perfect child._

Ursa did as instructed. She performed excellently. She held her tongue. A prodigy does not need to be taught a lesson twice. 

She watched without a word spoken as her husband demanded rigour from his daughter who had not yet reached six, as he plucked the most promising masters from prestigious academies across the nation to cut down this little wildfire until she was sharp and searing blue. A gruelling schedule was the minimum requirement and a flawless execution was the baseline. He strung her along with words of praise and the rare, tight smile, always fierce with pride.

His little prodigy. His little princess. His little girl.

_Outstanding. Exceptional work. Unseen prowess, at this tender age._

(It struck Ursa years too late that bright and sparkling words can be a kind of cage, as well.)

Every evening, over dinner, her husband would ask her daughter to expand on what she had learnt that day. She rattled off a list of triumphs and achievements and techniques mastered and advanced forms she had leapt across the schedule to tackle until she had almost run out of breath to give, until she was almost blue in the face as her father’s eyes weighed upon her, and only then he would say:

“That’s quite enough, Azula.”

Her daughter would sew her mouth shut like it had never been opened. 

Ursa would watch her chitter quite spiritedly about how her favourite forms could be used on a battlefield. She said nothing. Ursa would watch her silence herself like a doll, and say nothing. There was no room for anyone else to speak.

_Why did she say nothing?_

Except, her son, of course, determined to squeeze into a gap that couldn’t fit him, would find half a breath of space to speak.

His father claimed that his son would always fail to understand the difference between persistence and obstinance (but that would not stop him trying). Even with his weak, tremble of a flame yet to come, he had tried to chase the trail his sister blazed by wrapping himself up in firebending scrolls and learning everything he could about the martial art. He pored over faded diagrams and precious scrolls kept behind glass cases, memorised the first forms, the stances, the philosophies that entwined them, their various applications and uses and styles from which they came, and somehow it would end up pouring out of him, all these words and facts and theories, he said just couldn’t _help it,_ he’d end up interrupting her and cutting her off and—

His father would slam his hand down on the table.

_Zuko._

He’d spit out his son’s name like it was _poison_ , like a stain. 

She held her tongue. She was silent as her husband cut her son into pieces with just two syllables. Her daughter watched attentively as all the air left the room except for her brother’s frantic breathing.

  
  


_Years later, the memory spins around in her mind like a summer storm. Too much air. Why did she say nothing?_

Her daughter still thought she could play the same sorts of games with Zuko, in between the spaces of a scheduled existence. Her mother’s role was to remind her she could not. She recalled the last time her daughter ran past her with muddy shoes, clutching something too tightly in her hands.

“Azula. Come here.”

Her daughter skidded to a halt. She was not used to her name spoken so sharply, a reprimand.

“Show me what you have, young lady.”

She opened her hands. It was a tiny silk-sparrow. Its wings were delicate enough to snap and its heart beat so quick as to be a thrum. Its tail feathers, she noticed, were mildly singed.

“Did you do this?”

Her daughter looked shocked. She shook her head emphatically. _No no no!_ _Zuko found it like this, and I’m taking it to a healer,_ her daughter didn’t say, as she tried to keep all the tears and blubbering locked inside of her. Ursa would only find out later, because her son would recount the story excitedly, and how Azula swooped down and rescued it, an act of heroism.

Ursa did yet not know this, and sighed. She cupped her daughter's cheek, and spoke soft and firm. “Azula, this doesn't belong in the palace. It’s _hurt_ _._ You need to leave it outside, where its mother can find it.”

Her daughter nodded. Mothers knew best.

Ursa then glanced down at the mess her daughter's feet were covered in. “Your shoes are muddy. Remember to change them before dinner.”

With every breath her daughter took those tales told of runaway adventure and dazzling heroism became fuel for the fire, all those childhood dreams ablaze. She stopped caring for stories, and her son stopped telling them. He began to play alone. It wasn’t difficult to notice that he had no one else to play with.

_Remember your promise._

When her son eventually bent his first flame, it should have been an unforgettable moment. She should have inked that soft flicker of amber cupped in his hands onto the canvas of her mind, but she had no recollection of it. 

What she remembered is how her husband would not say a word until her son knelt on a cold, hard floor with his hands above his head, a flame cradled within them. An offering.

“Twice as hard. That is how much you will need to work.”

What she remembered was how her son could not keep his hands still, that his shoulders began to seize up, and his flame began to quiver.

Her tongue was stuck in her throat.

_She has to be perfect. Simply perfect.  
_

While her daughter was laughing again (at her brother, or her brother’s joke, she could not tell), she spun around like a bird with half-grown feathers, but almost slipped. Her hair piece fell out of place, and she almost pulled down a priceless tapestry depicting the deposition and decapitation of the last monarch of the previous dynasty. Small matters, for a princess.

Ursa tuts quietly, as she tucks a stray strand of her daughter's hair behind her ear. “Your hair is such a mess.”

A scoff. “Father won’t care about my hair.”

“ _Azula_.”

Why did her daughter’s name sound like a warning bell in her mouth?

_Or else he won’t be enough._

Her son’s progress was steady. A gentle curve, for a gentle boy, but there was no space for such gentle things in a palace full of cold floors and hard faces and marching songs, except under the shimmer of silk, with the facade of a smile, to twist a wife’s heart into beating without a noise.

Her husband would hold his gaze until he struggled to breathe. He used choice words.

_Weak.  
_

_Pathetic._ _  
_

_Stupid._

_Ignorant._

_Worthless._

_A worthless boy._

She barely saw her son outside of meal times, where he would try to shrink into his seat and look into a forgotten corner of the room. He would say barely a word. Her daughter watched this with a blank face she had learnt from her father.

  
  


Her daughter would stumble.

She had clipped her ankle while training a complicated arrangement of kicks and spins that day, soft skin grazed open and bled, but she had said nothing of it. Not a single complaint.

It would need time to heal, however. Her daughter, however, had known better than to whine. She was well trained, her tutor had said. Her father must have been proud.

Ursa swallowed down all the wrong questions. _Did it hurt?_ She had almost asked her as she tucked her in at night, all the whispered words she saved once, for a little boy who could not stand up or leave his bed. _Are you alright? Do you need me?_

She said nothing, of course. Her daughter was strong, she told herself (not the first lie she told), and needed no such things. Not when she was touched by the sun, and had the full strength of her father’s love.

She would not need her mother, Ursa reminded herself. She would not need this weak, cloying affection. It would only weigh her down.

  
  


(Her son almost tripped and fell down the stairs to the south-east courtyard the next morning. A detail a careful eye might have forgotten, when painting a family portrait. Easy, not to mention.)

  
  
  


She began to notice that if her daughter stumbled over her feet at a formal presentation, she would find her son with a sprained ankle or wrist. That if her daughter had a wrinkle in her formal robes, her son would acquire a collection of bruises on his arm. Or if her daughter dared speak a syllable out of turn, she would find her son rubbing his jaw the next day.

If her daughter faltered, her son fell.

If her daughter failed—

 _Twice as hard_ , her husband said again, _he would need to work_.

  
  
  
  


“Your hair is tangled again _._ ”

Her daughter made a disgruntled noise. Some mumbling through a wrinkled-up nose about how it was her brother’s fault, actually, it was _his_ idea to go play in the cherry-thorn bushes, unlike him, she wouldn’t even think of something so _stupid_ –

“ _Not another word_.”

A servant handed her a pearl-toothed comb. An anniversary gift. (Another thing that was not hers.)

_If her daughter was perfect, her son would be enough._

Every knot would be straightened.

_If her daughter was perfect, her family would be safe._

Every strand would sit in its correct place.

_If her daughter was perfect, her daughter could soar._

“You are a princess, Azula,” she said. She took the comb and pulled hard.

  
  


For her daughter, she would put on the performance of a lifetime. For her daughter, she would tell the most brazen lies. She would become the perfect mother. 

Every appearance. Every performance. All would be scrutinised for the slightest error. She was the appraiser of a precious gem, searching for chips and cuts and flaws. A single crease. A mud stain. The slightest tear in her sleeve. A slouch. A snide word, spoken out of turn. None of these things were acceptable at court, she would tell her daughter, in a voice that was as soft and gentle as her husband’s hands pretended to be.

“You are a _princess_ , Azula,” she would stress, in a voice enveloped in worry.

She told herself that this was an act of love, of a different kind. Her son needed soft words to bloom but her daughter was watched by her father’s stern eyes. Not a breath could be out of place. Her love had to be stern. Her love had to be harsh.

(What a brazen lie, she told herself.)

Her daughter’s hands would be simply perfect, and they would never be her own. 

  
  


Azula’s progress in her firebending was astounding.

_Not enough._

Every word unspoken was to become fuel for the fire. Every complaint and scrape and whine and mutter and mumble swirled into a scorching flame that was enough to swallow up every silk-sparrow in the gardens and send every feather up in smoke. Every childish noise was cut short, until all that was left was the blue of the sky.

 _Not enough_.

Her daughter would begin to speak with her father's words and her father's voice. To the point. Razor sharp.

Her son looked like a caged animal as she spoke.

_Not enough._

Her daughter invented new games to play with her brother, which she told her mother that the other little girls from the academy, those proper young ladies who toed the lines she wanted to set aflame, had taught her the rules for. A flawless lie.

_Not enough._

The threat of being scorched was a wonderful motivator.

_Not enough._

When her son came back to his mother, he was much too tall to curl up inside of his mother’s sleeve, but that did not stop him from trying.

_Not enough._

It all came flooding out.

  
  
  
  


“She calls me names,” he mumbled into his shoulder. He didn’t want to be here, saying this. 

Ursa turned around towards her daughter, whose hand she was holding just a little too sharply. 

“What names do you call him, Azula?”

Her daughter was trying to hold in a scowl as she looked at her brother with daggers for eyes. _Traitor,_ she had mouthed before, when she thought Ursa's eyes were not there. She was saying nothing more than that.

“Look at me, Azula,” Ursa said, softly.

Her daughter twisted away, a childish gesture she should have grown out of. Ursa found herself wanting to sigh. Her fingers reached softly beneath her daughter’s chin and pulled her face upwards as her daughter tried not to tremble.

“Tell me what you said.”

Azula’s eyes flicked upwards with a sharp intake of breath, as if she had just touched something sharp. Her eyes were the same shade and shape as her grandmother’s, but all the words she said were exact copies of things his father would say. Perfectly enunciated. Crisp.

  
  
_Weak. Pathetic. Worthless._

“I’m concerned for her.”

“What on earth could you be concerned about?”

To pluck up the courage to speak to her husband might have taken her more than a year were it not for her son. She did not have years to spare, for with each passing month he would continue to wilt and shrink until there was little left of the boy who lost himself in theatre scrolls.

Her husband regarded her like he was looking for a chip in a precious gem. In the privacy of their chambers where he once liked to hear her speak so avidly about the theatre, muttering about costumes and characters and such nonsense until the stars began to fade from the sky, was the one place where she dared speak his name without embellishment.

She placed her hands on his. Patient. Soft. The sort that knew how to calm storms. She had expected he might not understand. There was so much to say about their failing son, frustrating the patience of every tutor they had found for him, floundering over the basics again. So few words for their daughter, their almost perfect daughter.

“Her behaviour, Ozai. There’s something not quite right.”

His eyes narrowed. “Aren’t you supposed to be the authority, regarding her behaviour?”

Ursa felt her gaze falter, for a moment. She had been a proper mother for a proper daughter who knew her proper place.

But her love for her son made her bold. Dangerously so.

“She’s so cruel to her brother.”

He looked at her with surprise. Then, uncertainty. His eyes narrowed.

There was a moment where she almost wondered whether he would strike her. She would wonder why, later, why she seized up and stilled like a predator was about to strike her throat. There was no reason he would do so, of course. He would never harm his perfect princess. His beloved wife. He cared so deeply for his family.

He did not strike her, of course. He pinched his nose, as if contemplating a particularly troubling headache, and softly, he laughed.

“Ridiculous,” he said, with the remains of a laugh still on his lips. “She’s simply a child. You act like she’s a monster.”

It was almost affectionate, the way he laughed at her. It made her want to scream.

  
  
  


After the confrontation, her daughter barely spoke to her of her own volition. She clung to her father’s side, flourishing in his pride, while she looked at her across the distance of a hallway. There would be a flash of emotion: contempt, rage, a hatred that she would swallow before she wore a blank face. A mask was as good a place as any to hide.

Sometimes, in the split-second before, she would look fearful.

It was easier than it should have been to justify, but it would be a lie to say it didn’t hurt. It was easier still to say that her husband had done this to spite her.

The next time her husband touched her hand with something masquerading as gentleness, Ursa thought of the white flame. She dreamed of those rare, white flames spilling from her hands like the sun again, and swallowing her husband whole. She imagined his body as a charred husk and the whole room alight in fire, because her husband had stolen her daughter from her, he had _stolen her daughter_ and _stolen her little girl_ and twisted her against her, someone who strayed from her touch, replaced her, with something that would delight in cruelty, something that would smile with malice, that would play along perfectly to the march of thunder and lightning, _his daughter, his daughter who was never hers, always his_ – 

But she said nothing, and smiled at him softly.

 _Husbands will break everything of their wives, up to and including their fingers,_ her mother’s voice warned. _Until they learn obedience._

The court adored the quiet footsteps and soft machinations of their Lady Ursa. The perfect wife and mother, who wound up her daughter like clockwork. It would have been so easy to pretend that he had taken her daughter and twisted her into his little soldier were it not for how when Ursa’s hands reached for a pearl-toothed comb, her daughter held in a flinch.

Her daughter looked away from the mirror as her mother combed her hair.

_(Who are you? Is it who you ought to be?)_

  
  
A day after her eighth birthday, her daughter was to present herself to the Fire Lord. She would display her firebending prowess, presenting advanced forms beyond her years, with a flame in a new colour. A bright, beautiful blue.

Hot enough to cut through steel, to slice through soldiers, to blaze through everything in her way, triumphant, dazzling. 

It felt like a distress call, a flare, and a warning bell. It felt like every alarm that could cry out. She wanted to cry out as well, but instead she watched her daughter execute a spectacular performance without flaw, and afterwards, said not a single word, and only felt a sense of deep unease where her pride should have been. 

_Why did you say nothing?_ she wanted to say to the mirror. But the mirror can offer no answers, no dialogue, nothing gleaned, alone. 

Her daughter’s hands would be simply perfect, and they would never be her own. They were in the mould of someone else's, a version in miniature. They would be immaculate, soft and unblemished by anything beneath her station. Pearly nails filed to fine points and kept clean despite all attempts to dirty them. 

The hands of a perfect princess.

She looked away from the mirror, where her mother’s eyes and words taunted her in reflection, and walked away without a sound.

Something had to change. Something had to break.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I tried really hard to get the balance right here. Ursa is *not* a reliable narrator, especially here, hence all the questioning. Ursa does not delight in being cruel, but she's cruel to Azula here. However, that cruelty comes from a place of fear - and a misguided belief that this will protect her children. I think Ursa lies to herself a lot, especially regarding how she treats Azula, and why. 
> 
> Something that was also important for me to show was that while Azula is cruel to Zuko, she is not "born evil", and her cruelty ultimately stems from Ozai. In fact, everyone's behaviour stems from Ozai, to some extent. That does not absolve them at all (harm is still harm, even if it's shaped by abuse) but it explains why they act in certain ways. Why Zuko storms off when Azula firebends first. Why Ursa tries so hard to ensure her daughter is perfect, to the extent of cruelty. Why Azula lashes out at her brother as that pressure - from both her parents - begins to get to her.
> 
> Anyway. Thank you all, as ever, for reading and commenting. I always look forward to what you guys have to say. Hope this one wasn't too much of a killer.


	7. gnarled and sword-bitten old hands

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **content warning:** discussion of depression, references to past abuse, psychological & physical abuse. 
> 
> general note: Avatar Szeto was the Fire Nation Avatar before Yangchen. Notably, rather than travelling the world, he spent much of his life working as a civil servant for the Fire Nation and prevented it from collapsing into war through his bureaucratic efforts. He's discussed in the Kyoshi novels.

**vii: father**

She awoke often with a desire to do nothing.

It wasn’t sadness. It was the stillness one found at the deepest point of a lake, where the light could not enter for all the water that hung above it.

_You act like she’s a monster._

She busied herself well enough in the meantime. Occupied her hands and her mind quite readily as her spirit stilled, ensured that something was always moving even as a door stayed shut on the inside. This flurry of activity, all her sittings in committees where she kept notes of her own fastidiously, all the honey spread with ministers’ wives in exchange for favours, while she continued to collect secrets, backhand gossip and blackmail that would make seasoned soldiers blush, would sometimes be rewarded with a glance of acknowledgement from her husband. 

She wondered how many lives she had casually ruined. How many great men had stumbled because she had pulled on a feather-light string, to meet his demanding expectations.

She was drowning.

She tried to treasure what she could cling onto while the water gathered at her feet, still held onto every spare moment with her son. Tried to cradle him, a bright-eyed boy who was growing into the spitting image of his father, but softer, still fumbling and imprecise, still so earnest. So earnest, in how much he adored his father, whose looming figure he was always compared to. Just a bit taller, a bit harder, a bit sharper, he'd need to become. She tried to hold him back, to cling to old lullabies and dated theatre scrolls, with every gentle touch, but was it enough? It was like fighting the pull of the tides.

She waited for letters that she tried to treasure as well. _Dear Aunt Ursa,_ she hoped they would begin. _My deepest condolences,_ she feared they might contain. Every day she observed the empty box they were supposed to occupy. Every day, something in her felt a little more bruised.

She was drowning as the waves swept in, and nothing in her quickened.

She tried to appreciate the small details, cling onto the simple things like driftwood, discarded pieces still floating. Red orchid flowers her husband had sent for her in a high-necked vase. Wooden theatre masks painted severe colours that her children liked to wear on festival days. A careful portrait of a father and a mother, a daughter and a son, framed in the centre, surrounded by a little collection of seashells mottled and marbled that her son had scooped up from the sea.

Perhaps this was what families reduced themselves to: collections of objects. Souvenirs that pulled back memories, and took them from how time would grind on. She let her fingertips trace over those shells, and in that moment, she was by the sea again, at the summer estate which was too dreamlike to be a home, where every grain of sand hadn’t been filed down by hand, where what was coarse felt soft.

Then the moment passed.

Her mother sent her yet another letter. She almost burnt it. What would she feel, if she set it alight, and watched it crumble to ash?

She was drowning. Her husband’s lips twitched with amusement as her fingers creased the edges over and over, as she read the stiff words aloud in a small voice. “You aren’t thinking of going, aren’t you?” he asked her.

“I cannot refuse. My father…” The words faded. She did not know how to say it.

A hand slunk around her wrist softly and she wondered when his touches began to feel like chains. He turned to look at her directly.

“You can if I forbid it.”

He had stopped smiling.

“I…” she began.

Everything was still.

“Go on. Speak.”

Why did it feel like the world had stopped?

“I would like your permission to take the children with me.” she said, as she bowed her head. A formal request, as her husband’s fingertips had become her shackle. 

“You may, of course, take Zuko. I think it might even do him _some good_.” It sounded so disparaging, as if the thought of her son even approaching usefulness was impossible. She tried not to bristle. She kept her head bowed, her words meek.

“I would like my daughter to accompany me as well. I believe it would benefit her, as well.”

The world stopped breathing until he spoke.

He tutted, quietly, as if dealing with a child. 

“Fine,” he said. “I will allow it.”

But it would come with conditions. They’d spend a week fewer at the summer estate this year to compensate. He would be allowed to leave early, without need to provide an excuse, and he could take his daughter with him.

His daughter.

  
  
  
  


* * *

When she arrived, it was raining. The courtyard had flooded and the rain had not relented for six days. Her mother watched Ursa run from the carriage, silks drenched and ruined, without a word in greeting.

The housekeeper made her and her mother tea in the reception room while the children raced ahead to the baths, impatient footsteps in quiet, over-polished corridors.

The tea had been steeped too long, but it was familiar, if a little unpleasant.

“The whole family has gathered in anticipation of your visit.”

Ursa nodded. “My brothers.”

“And their girls. Almost women now,” the housekeeper said, with a quick smile. “But your father has specifically requested your presence, Lady Ursa. He has sought a private audience with you for quite some time.”

Lady Ursa. The title felt strange, from a servant who had caught her sneaking out the back gate after her brothers’ tracks countless times. She felt her back stiffen. She held in a shiver.

“He can wait. I would like to get settled, first.”

The housekeeper looked flustered. Hands curled up like a breath was being held. She nodded meekly.

“Of course, my lady.”

She left. The room was empty, except Ursa and her mother. The silence was uncomfortable.

As a child, she would sit in silence as her mother’s eyes bored into her until she was perforated sheet of correctly placed holes. She recalled sitting for what felt like hours until she took the correct place.

It took only a few moments for her mother to speak.

“You look perfectly miserable, Ursa.”

Ursa reached for her tea cup with faultless grace.

“Thank you, mother.”

“Will you be staying for long, or will you be rushing back off to your husband at the first opportunity?”

Ursa did not allow her eyebrows to raise. She took a sip. Bitter, of course. 

“We will stay as long as we need. Thank you for accommodating us, Mother.”

She placed her cup down.

She didn’t say a word after that.

  
  
  
  


* * *

Her brothers, now tall and greying and peppered with scars, averted their gaze, and bowed to greet them. As did their children, three teenage girls who held themselves with the discipline of grown soldiers. There was a sense of wrongness in their stiff backs and full bows that she could not quite articulate.

The only son, it was explained, had already gone to the front.

“He just turned sixteen last year, didn’t he?”

Her eldest brother, who kept his hands neatly behind his back as if they were tied together, smiled without it reaching his eyes. “He’s been assigned to a regiment at Ba Sing Se. He’s at the walls as we speak.”

She felt something sink in her at the thought of a nephew at those impenetrable walls. Five hundred and eighty-one days, it had been, waiting for letters. 

“You must be very proud,” she said, with the same smile.

The first few meals together had been small and silent. Their father’s vacant chair occupied the space where words were spoken. Bedridden, nobody said. Her mother spent most of her waking hours at his side, leaving the house strangely empty, except when she played the harp on the veranda in the late afternoon. On those occasions, all conversation would halt. 

Too little, she first thought, had changed, her mother too house-proud to let the paint peel or the untouched scrolls in the library gather dust, with every paper in its exact place, although that did stop her children looking at each ornament or old doll like curiosities in a museum. How strange, to have them gawk at reminders of her childhood. How strange, for them to sit at this table, and fuss and fidget while all Ursa could hear was the shrill whistle of a kettle, the sharp intake of breath, her mother’s unmoving lips, sealed shut.

It felt suffocating. 

At least, until her son spoke up. 

“Can you actually use those?” he asked, as he indicated to the pairs of twin blades that weighed heavily at each of his uncles’ sides.

If her brothers were ruffled by the question, they didn’t show it.

“Of course,” supplied her second eldest brother. “I have been able to since I was six. You’d be hard pressed not to, in our family.”

“Oh,” he said. He hadn’t known that, of course. He had known nothing about this family, this stifled house, these misty hills. It had only been a marking on a map, a line behind his mother’s name, before now. He kept looking at the swords. “Can… can I see?”

Her brother’s eyebrows went up. “You’d like a demonstration, eh?”

He nodded. “But not _now,_ obviously,” he added, quickly. “Later. When you can.”

“I’m sure our uncles have better things to do than perform sword-tricks at the dinner table,” her daughter muttered, loud enough to be heard.

“Oh, don’t even suggest it,” said her eldest brother, unfazed. “He’ll take that as a challenge.”

Her other brother just laughed. “Yes, Zuko, we can give you a demonstration.”

Silence softened then into a trickle of conversation, gentle banter between her brothers, who had whose smiles felt like scars as much as secrets. Her nieces began to unstraighten their backs at meal times, and stopped stealing bewildered looks at 'the prince and princess'. They whispered gossip - rather loudly - across the table about their newly discovered baby cousins. The next day, in the very same courtyard that her father had lined up his children like toy soldiers in order to discipline them, her son watched them wield metal like it was weightless, two halves of a lightning strike. His older cousins had snuck up to sit beside him while he watched wide-eyed, hands dancing like his father hadn't spent ten years straightening them out. The days after, he’d tag along after his eldest cousin as she went wandering through the wilds Ursa was always barred from, follow her like a shy shadow until she showed him how to hold a sword. The younger ones fussed over him until he let them braid his hair, and after that he was as good as theirs. They began nudging him with their elbows and tapping him on the shoulder and bothered him constantly, whispering some joke he'd wheeze and laugh a little too hard at. On the mornings they could pull themselves up early enough, they started gathering on the veranda to watch her son move through his firebending forms as the sun rose, transfixed. They’d sometimes cheer him on, which her son found more than a little embarrassing, at first. He wasn’t used to such earnest praise from anyone who wasn’t his mother.

Her daughter hadn’t particularly liked any of that, of course. 

She'd been less than enthused by the prospect of deviating from schedule for the sake of an ailing grandfather _who couldn't even bend_ , she had said, in the most indignant little voice, and spent the entire carriage journey dwelling in what can only be described as a sulk. Her daughter exhausted the novelty of the house before long, which she had deemed 'provincial' with the same note of scorn her husband reserved for bothersome nobles he disliked, but did not loathe. While she was most assuredly above the attention of her ‘provincial’ cousins, it had offended her greatly that her cousins had taken to her brother first. In order to correct this, she had pestered her brother into sparring with her the next morning. Yet when Azula beat him to a crisp, humiliated him, instead of radiant praise, her cousins' faces were horrified.

None of her husband's quiet praise or attentive eyes. No words like _outstanding_ muttered as if he was witnessing a marvel in creation. Just quiet horror.

(“Zuko, are you alright?” whispered her fourteen year old niece, soft, and sympathetic, and kinder than a little soldier’s ever should have been.)

Ursa watched her slip away. Ursa watched her slink around the house as if no one could hear or see her. Her heart ached for her daughter. Her daughter, who had grown more cutting, more cruel, and was drifting away from her ( _and whose fault was that?_ asked a voice that dripped in guilt, asked the voice in the mirror). She knew from bitter experience that there was no joy in being left alone. She tried to keep an eye on her. Search for her, in between the cracks. Occasionally she'd catch her daughter hiding in a nook or a forgotten corner, sometimes with a book in her lap. She approached carefully. She’d kneel down, enquire with a whisper-soft voice as to what she was doing there, kept her questions curious, hesitant, and small, and reached out with a gentle hand.

Her daughter would recoil from it, as if it were foreign, as if all she knew was harshness, chiselled lines and taut strings and the static before a storm. Soft voices and sympathetic touches, kinder than they ever should have been, these things her daughter didn’t understand.

The distance felt like it was growing, not shrinking. 

  
  
  
  
  


* * *

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


Ursa waited more than two weeks before she knelt, like a child again, by his bedside. 

His room wasn’t stifled by its drawn curtains, or the dust. If anything there was still too much light seeping in, and too much empty space. It felt oppressive.

She wondered if she should feel afraid.

A servant entered. On a small table, he poured two cups of green tea, heated to the exact degree with a soft amber flame. The tea set, she noted, was pearl embossed with gold, gifted to her mother by the late Lady Ilah. Their very best. It had been immaculately preserved, with no chips or ridges on the edge of the porcelain that Ursa could run her finger across.

The servant bowed fully, and left. Ursa took a delicate sip.

It was too bitter.

She did not look to the bed and all its cushions and the six sets of sheets that smelt faintly of rosewater, her mother’s touch, surely. She did not peer at the man swallowed within them, or observe how frail, how laboured, his movements were. It took him some effort, and took him some time, to pull himself upwards, and she had the decency to look elsewhere. She counted the strained lines along the weathered floorboards while he did not touch the tea cup poured for him.

“Princess Ursa,” he said. “You look perfectly miserable.”

There was the voice of a proud man who had stood upright in his brass buckled uniform, who ran a household like a battalion. Light, and yet edging on acerbic.

It had cut right through lesser men.

“You requested my presence, father.”

Not her mother, or her brothers, or anyone else. If there was a question attached to that statement, implied, hanging in the air, he ignored it.

“You know how to play pai sho, I take it?”

She nodded like her head was attached to a string.

She had never played this game with her father, only observed her brothers place tiles in a quiet room. They would often practice, in preparation for an audience with him. She did not know why a board of floral tiles so fascinated her father but she’d made note of all of their mistakes. She’d told herself that if her father ever asked her to play, she would not make any of missteps.

He never had until now.

Nothing was said until the game was in motion. It was strange how this room was the last reserve of quiet for a house that showed the first symptoms of an infestation of noise. From this window, she couldn’t hear the distant shouting of her wild nieces, who were cheering on her son as he attempted to spar with her eldest brother, or the cascading melodies her mother would play from the veranda, or the frustrated grumbles and gripes her daughter would make, as she practised her advanced forms for the sixth time that afternoon, alone.

It was eerie.

She had to remind herself that there were no more dinners where all she would hear was the sharp whistle of her mother’s kettle. Old fears should have shrunk to the size of dolls. Fragile. Easy to shatter.

“Is it your husband?” her father asked, suddenly, without prompting, as he contemplated the white lotus tile between forefinger and thumb, like it was a minor annoyance. “I noticed he hadn’t chosen to accompany you here.” He discarded the piece. He chose another. “A pity. I would have quite liked to have finally introduced myself to His Royal Highness.”

“He has rather important business in the capital.” Ursa kept her tone smooth and seamless. “The war council requires his support to levy the new land tax. He sends his apologies.”

“Does he now?” her father asked. “I had heard Prince Ozai had never apologised for anything in his life, much less cared for agrarian taxation reforms, despite what you might suppose from his reputation. One begins to wonder who is pulling the strings.”

Ursa held her tongue.

She would not give credit to rumour. It did not matter how many sabres her father pried off the corpses of dead Earth Kingdom generals, how many earthbending hands he had sliced into pieces with them, how many audiences of honour for each forefinger and thumb he should have been granted at court, whose invitations he had not received, never received, her father was only a captain, and would never be a decorated general on the Fire Lord’s war council. There were no ears and eyes in the paper-thin shutters and doors here. This was not a place of court gossip, the thin, polished corridors of her childhood home. She had departed quiet gardens through which rumour wandered for harsh shores that housed choppy seas and wilds that howled too much, too often, over the hills, where instead of the perfume or crockery or cuisine of the nations they had slaughtered, her father liked to seize the weapons that had almost slit his throat and hang them on the walls. A crude reminder.

She glanced upwards, and looked into her father’s eye directly.

“It’s an interesting gambit, nonetheless,” her father continued, smiling. “Prince Ozai could never be half the general his brother is, so instead sets up at the royal counting house. A true statesman. A true heir to Szeto.”

He snorted at his own joke. Ursa tried not to tighten her jaw. Avatars were faint shadows in her firelight, haunting each and every pruned withered branch of her burning family tree: another would make no difference.

“Oh, you don’t think I _disapprove_ , now, do you Ursa?” He clucked his tongue, seemingly amused. “No, it’s clever, more than I would have expected from the man. It may even succeed. Tell me, do you know how many days it has been since the siege of Ba Sing Se began?”

Five hundred and ninety-seven days.

Five hundred and ninety-seven days of proclamations that the walls would be rubble by the solstice, and the city ash. Five hundred and ninety-seven days she had checked a wooden hatch for letters every morning, and with each instance it was empty, her heart had sunk further.

_Dear Aunt Ursa, I want to come home._

A constant drowning, with no recourse. Five hundred and ninety-seven days.

“No,” said Ursa, simply. “I don’t.”

“A shame that you don’t. Five hundred and ninety-seven to the day,” he said. “A long, brutal siege. Longer, and more costly, than most bargained for, and with no clear end in sight.”

He sighed. It almost sounded weary, defeated.

“Ursa, when the propaganda trumpets victory after victory, and yet the populace only receives letters of apologies, to inform them their sons and daughters are deceased, are they proud of their nation? Do they relish the prospect of the next Fire Lord, when in their eyes, there is little difference between a conqueror and a cavalier general who collects victories like trophies, who churns through the youth of the nation like butter? Or might they choose his brother, the statesman, the anchor in this storm, the man who kept the grain flowing while its coffers almost choked on its desires for conquest?”

Ursa looked at the tiles in her hand. She had read those letters. She’d read hundreds of those letters, and told herself that it did not concern her, and whether that itself was a lie-coated in truth or a truth-coated in lie, simply did not matter. Five hundred and ninety-seven days. They kept sending stacks of letters regardless of how she felt.

She placed a tile on the board.

“The whims of the common people are fickle,” she said, the politician’s excuse coming to her lips naturally. “They are above our concern.” 

Her father paused, and frowned.

Hairs on the back of her neck stood to attention.

She thought of how in the courtyard where she and her brothers had lined up, heads down, hands outstretched, where weeds had since grown between the paving stones.

She thought of the whistle of the tea-kettle that now had a crack along its side, unusable, and how the many scars that lined her brothers’ arms beneath their uniforms.

She thought of how the arms of the rosewood dining chair she dug her fingernails into, that would splinter as she gripped them, had been cut up, crushed, and replaced in favour of a dark ebony wood instead.

He could not pour his own tea. His hands now shook too much.

She watched those shaking hands place a tile on the board carefully.

“My wife tells me,” he began, as he moved his hands back into his lap, “That you have afternoon tea with the minister of propaganda’s wife twice a week. I think you’re lying to me. I think you don’t mind getting your sleeves wet at all.”

Ursa did not look away from how the glint in his eyes looked as if it was a scalpel trying to cut her up.

“I was told a story that General Iroh is fond of recounting to his senior officers. The sort of nonsense you’d tell the rank and file about not misjudging their opponent. The particulars, though, caught my attention, as they spoke of how a demure and deferential princess once bested him utterly at a game of pai sho. Trounced him, if you’d hear him tell it. For all her airs and graces, she was a ruthless player.”

 _That had been years ago_ , she found herself thinking. A careless mistake _._ Back when there was still the soft touch of a crown princess to goad her into sampling all those colonial wines at a select gathering where they let their laughter spark like firecrackers. He’d interrupted what was to be a very pleasant evening, and that had rankled. It had rankled even more, the prospect of letting him win the game with a pliant smile.

A ruthless player.

Her husband had not been pleased when she returned smelling of wine and speaking of flowers carved onto little clay tiles. She did not like to remember the particulars of that night.

“I wasn’t aware you concerned yourself with the particulars of my comings and goings so personally,” said Ursa, calmly. “I know you always favoured the battlefield to court.”

“The two are one and the same to the Fire Lord. Which, if I’m not mistaken, my own grandson will become, one day.”

Ursa did not smile.

“You speak so openly of treason, Father. I’d thought a patriot such as yourself would rather gut himself than conspire on his lord and nation.”

Her father choked out a laugh.

“I’m about three months away from rotting from the inside. Two, if I’m lucky. I will speak as I please, Ursa. _Lady Ursa._ ” The way her name curled out of his mouth, twisted off his tongue, sounded like a taint on his own reputation. It must have wounded him, to consider a daughter worthy of respect. “Half way to the throne already, you’d think the court would know better than be so _shameless—_ ”

“Father-”

He slammed his hand on the board.

The room shook.

Her mother’s tea cup toppled to the ground. Fine porcelain gashed open. Green tea spilled along the floor, on the golden silk embroidery that trailed along the edges of her dress.

Ilah’s legacy, in pieces.

“It’s curious to me, Ursa, that you could have won this game precisely two moves ago, and have deliberated since then. Did you think I wouldn’t notice?”

 _Three moves ago_ , she thought, as she forced herself to keep still, to refuse to flinch beneath his eye.

“The court almost treats you like _true born_ royalty,” he continued, with a snort of derision. “It’s quite revolting, how easy they’re making it for you. Can’t you see? They’re offering _you_ the crown on a plate, _Lady_ Ursa. Not him. They don’t call him _Lord_ , your husband, do they? A few more moves, and you could call an Agni Kai for the dynasty. Dispose of Sozin’s decaying line. Seize the crown for your son.”

Ursa watched her father’s cold, calculating eyes assess her, as he leaned closer.

“Yet instead,” he continued. “You cower behind lesser men. Why, Ursa?”

As she held her father’s eye, her tongue perfectly still, her breathing silent, she felt something in her move.

Her father was the firstborn son of the patriarch of the oldest clan in the Fire Nation, whose lineage of first-class swordsmen and strategists could be traced back to the self-proclaimed seafaring kings who fought with the first Fire Lord, and ensured that the first, bloodied dynasty was a short one. Her father had been the finest military mind in eleven generations, a ruthless tactician who, had he been born with flames spouting from his hands like his forefathers, would have sat at the Fire Lord’s right hand side, as his forefathers had done. Fathers and sons, all of them.

He could not produce a single spark, of course. And now, riddled with sickness, he could not pour his own tea. He could not place a tile without his hands shaking. 

_Why do you cower behind lesser men?  
_

She felt something in her snap.

“You’re shameless,” she said, quietly. “Absolutely shameless.”

She stood up. She took a step forward.

“You sold me off like cattle to that _lesser_ man,” Ursa said, “because you thought it might curry favour with the Fire Lord who considers you _beneath him_ –”

“ _Ursa.”_

“– _failing to acknowledge,”_ she cut across, her voice rising, the feeling in her rising, beginning to awaken, beginning to broil. “That he treats his second born with the exact same _disdain_ that you regard the middling efforts of your own second born son, a better flautist than a footsoldier, who could never be a captain, let alone a _general._ You threw me out to sea without a rope and you let me drown in a marriage meant as a punishment–”

“Ursa, _stop._ ”

“–in the eyes of _the Fire Lord_ , it was a match made in misery, as you so astutely observed, and yet that does not particularly _concern_ me, because I could never be _half_ as miserable as you are, sold off to a woman whose name was soiled in disgrace, a _tainted_ legacy that I am the heir to–”

“ _Ursa!”_

She could smell smoke. She didn’t care.

“You never wrote to me once, Father. You wrote relentlessly to my brothers, your little soldiers who you hoped would cement a legacy of greatness, so desperate were you for what you believed was _stolen_ from you. It’s pathetic. Even the letter that brought me here was written by my mother – yet even that does not _concern_ me, truly.”

She could smell something smouldering.

She stopped, for a second.

Took a breath.

She could smell a fire raging inside of her. Perhaps it was time to let it loose.

“Father. Let me be clear. My son, _my daughter_ , they are not yours. They are not yours to claim as _a victory._ And if you were thinking to use my children like disposable pieces on a board, then you are _gravely_ mistaken.”

She could smell fire, and it was almost white hot, before a hand gripped hers like a chain again.

“Ursa, _that’s enough_.”

He was going to reprimand her. 

He was going to tear her down to nine years old again, clutching broken dolls and stolen letters, watching a tea-kettle with scalding water pour onto a brother’s arm while her mother said nothing (her mother always said nothing), and she tried not to scream. He would only need his tongue to make her feel small and breakable, in this room with too much light.

_I’m not yours. I’m not yours. I’m not yours._

No. She would not allow it. Not now.

She tore herself away. Her hand pulled away, her fingers parted and a ripple of electricity began to build along her fingertips, and as he grappled her wrist, as he tried to cling on, his hands got caught in the lightning that she refused to extinguish–

It was only a few seconds, but that was enough.

Pai sho tiles spilled across the floor.

She had _burned_ him.

He stifled a cry.

“Ursa,” he strained to say, hunched over, his voice hoarse, his eyes beginning to tear up in pain, because she had burned him, and it hadn’t been an accident, and it hadn’t been caused by any lack of control, or precision, on her part. “Are you going to kill me?”

She stood, cold fire still crackling along her wrists, blinding white, the colour of morning, the colour of stars. She watched as the blood drained from his face. It would be easy. It would only take a few moves.

He looked so pitiful. Had he thought her _lesser_ than him? Greater or lesser, what does that mean to an old, worn-out soldier? A sharp mind, a sharp tongue, a sharp blade? Was it really something so crude? Was it all simply violence?

She took a step backwards.

“No,” she said. “You’re not worthy of it.”

The fire died out.

She turned to run, almost as if she were nine years old again. 

  
  
  
  


* * *

Her mother cried out to her, as she ran out of the house, past the veranda, towards the wilds where she was not allowed to explore freely as a child, her shouts blurring in the wind that whipped past like a whistle—

She could have killed him.

_She could have burned him alive._

  
  
  


_Why did she cower behind lesser men?_   
  
  
  
  


She was found hours later, kneeling in the woods, at the crumbling feet of a toppled statue, a shrine to the Avatar. Such things had once been commonplace across the nation back when the calendars were aligned with the Eras of Avatars and not the Dynasties of Fire Lords. She’d read avidly of them in her father’s forbidden scrolls as a child: brash gold statues of the favoured Fire Avatars had stood at the Caldera’s temple gates, while the eastern chain of hallowed isles that could not be drowned by the Mo Ce sea’s waters forwent such things for a simple offering plate. In the storm-torn south, whose bloodied shores had long known war before this one, shrines were found not in cities, but in nature - in the mouths of forests, in quiet woods, at the feet of mountains. Retreats, these sites of prayer were, for a figure that eclipsed nations, and borders, petty conflicts, warlords, and tyrants.

Most were in ruins, now. No incense had been burned, no flower petals offered, only rain and wind. A monument to broken things and cold ashes.

And still, the thought kept repeating:

She could have killed him. Why did she cower behind lesser men?

Her brothers had found her first. They tried to tell her that her mother was inconsolable, furious, _what was she thinking_ , being so selfish, causing their poor, troubled mother all this anguish? They drowned their fears in their worries, their chiding tones, as if she didn’t notice how they flinched if she so much touched them now.

“Anguish,” she had wanted to say, she had wanted to laugh, wrong and twisted, all of it. “Over some _spilt tea?_ ”

It was funny, part of her wanted to scream, the voice she buried behind a thousand layers of silk and sunlight. It was just tea and pai sho, to him, all of this, old men’s games. He’d wanted to play that round with fire and had gotten burned as a result of his own utter carelessness, speaking so openly of outright treason to a princess. His hands were gnarled and sword-bitten old things that shook as they reached for a simple tea cup, already layered with scars and sordid history, what were a few more burns on top of that? Her father could take it. Her father would say the same.

She said none of this. She kept her silence. Even with Mother. Her mother could have said so many things, and it wouldn’t have hurt half as much, if her mother had said anything more than the bare minimum. She wondered what kind of lie her father had spun; it would be impossible to know, given how her mother refused to even speak of her heinous actions.

“Ursa. Why? Why turn on your own family?” her mother had asked her, the very question a wound.

 _Why did you say nothing, Mother, when he hurt your sons? Why did you not protect them?_ She had wanted to roar back, let the words out like a dragon’s fire. _Did you think I was a weapon, Mother? Yours to use and discard? Did you think I would let your bitterness poison me until I was a hidden blade that slipped between the ribs of those who wronged you as I embraced them? Did you think after all that talk of loyalty, I would have no loyalties of my own?_

But she knew silence hurt more. She had learnt her lessons in silence from her mother. She said only one thing.

“Mother, I think you are mistaken,” she had said, with her hands folded neatly in her lap. “I will always be loyal to my family.”

She stood up to leave without finishing her tea.

* * *

  
  
  
  
  


She got as far as the other side of the door. Crouched with her ear to the wall, was her daughter.

“Azula, what are you doing here?”

Startled, wide-eyed. An eight, almost nine year old girl. She did her best to pretend to be all grown-up, and sometimes, Ursa made the mistake of believing her. She tried to pull herself back up into her best little princess poise, a confident stance, full of composure. Almost flawless, already.

“You can make lightning,” she whispered, quickly. “ _Lightning.”_

Ursa bit back her surprise. She kneeled down. Spoke softly. “And who told you that, Azula?”

Her daughter blinked. Her hands twisted behind her back.

“Nobody.”

“ _Azula_.”

“I heard! I heard some servants _prattling on_ about it, that’s all.” Prattling, the newest word she'd picked up from her husband. She mumbled something about their names not being worth catching, they were _only servants_ , before looking up to her again, certain, earnest, almost wanting something. “Is it true or is it not?” she asked.

She could have lied. It would have been easy to weave another lie, another children’s story her daughter would have crumpled up, tossed away, and set alight. Another worthless memento. As thoughtless as the pretty dolls her uncle had sent her from the Earth Kingdom.

“It's true,” she said.

The guarded interest on her daughter's face broke apart. Azula's eyes almost sparkled with excitement.

“Show me. Show me, _please._ Show me your lightning.”

Ursa tried to keep her words calm. She couldn't snap at her. She didn't know what she was asking.

“Why do you want to see my lightning, Azula?”

Her daughter stopped. She looked away, considering the question, before looking directly at her mother.

“Because if you are truly that powerful,” she said, quiet, but firm. “You shouldn't hide it. Father demonstrates his superior bending all the time, and his allies respect him. His enemies fear him. Rightfully. I don't understand why you'd want to hide that power.”

Ursa swallowed a bitter laugh. What would placate a little soldier, who believed everything was in its correct place? She held back the urge to brush a stray hair off her daughter's cheek. She let it stay loose.

“Sometimes it's cleverer to conceal your power. Hiding can be a strategy. It can make you difficult to predict.”

Azula looked at her carefully, considering her words. Then, she nodded, as if she understood perfectly. She looked her directly in the eye.

“You can't show me,” she said. “Because it has to be kept a secret.”

That was one way to interpret it. A simple one. Secrets were a currency they both shared, a language they both spoke, princesses in a palace where people became shadows, and would disappear.

It was a lie, coated in truth, or perhaps a truth, coated in a lie.

“Yes,” she said, suddenly, desperately. “A secret. Please don't tell your brother.”

Her daughter looked at her oddly, then, with the mention of him. Then, she nodded again, as if it all made sense. She was being trusted with something of vital importance. She was valued.

“I won’t.”

Ursa smiled, with too much relief. “Good girl.”

Her hand reached up to her daughter’s face. Ursa half-expected her to seize up from the touch, to slip away further. But she didn’t shift away. She looked up at her eyes.

“Did you... kill grandfather?” she asked, in the quietest voice.

She felt something twist inside of her at the question that shouldn’t have been asked.

“Because,” her daughter continued, still too quiet, still below a whisper. “The servants said...”

Then she shut her mouth, firmly.

She was shaking.

She was afraid.

Her daughter was afraid.

Something unravelled in her.

“Oh, no, Azula, goodness, _no_. No, it’s not… it wasn’t like that. It’s just pai sho and tea. Old man games.”

The words felt so hollow.

Her daughter was afraid. Her daughter, for whom her heart ached for. Her daughter, who drew away. Her daughter, who she had _hurt._

She looked at her daughter, who she had demanded be perfect, for whom love had felt like a flood she had to hold back, a twisting guilt, and cold, festering regrets that she had to hold back and pin in place even though they slid past her ankles like water and seeped in somewhere deeper.

Her daughter, who was struggling to keep her breathing even, trembled before her.

“Azula,” she said, so very quietly. “Come here.”

The damn burst. The tide rushed in.

She pulled her into her arms, a warm embrace, a mother’s embrace, a _loving_ embrace, where her daughter could cling on, for once, like she had needed her. “Azula,” she said again, as if she were truly saying the word for the first time, “Azula,” she said, and it was not a reprimand, it was not a word to correct or enforce, to discipline, no matter how softly. _Azula, Azula, Azula_. Another name she had not chosen, another name she would hold on to, despite it. “It’s okay, Azula,” she said, wishing she could put eight years of tenderness into a name, wishing she could put eight years of love into a touch. “I’m… not angry. It’s okay, it’s… I’m _sorry._ I didn’t mean to scare you.”

“I’m not scared,” said her daughter, as she clung tighter, and buried her head into her shoulder. “I’m not. ’m _not_.”

“It’s okay to be scared. I won’t judge you. I won’t hurt you, Azula.”

“I’m _not.”_

It was almost forceful. 

Ursa pulled away to look at her.

_I love you,_ she should have said, _and_ _I would do anything to protect you,_ she should have said. _Anything._

“Of course,” she said, as her hand stroked her cheek. “You’re my brave little girl. You always have been.”

A brave little soldier girl, who followed her father’s every whim and command, who performed her drills to perfection (who was eight years old, alone in a strange house where people whispered so openly about lightning and pain and grief, whose eyes were now flooding with tears, though she’d vehemently deny it, little princesses did not _sob_ , or do anything as undignified).

She kissed her daughter’s forehead like a blessing. She was loyal, she decided. She was loyal to her family.

No man could take that away from her.

  
  


  
  
  
  


* * *

  
  
  
  
  


They left the next morning. It was raining again. Ursa’s second-favourite silks would be ruined. Her son left with a pair of ornate swords that she had already calculated exactly where to hide from her husband while her daughter left holding her hand tightly. Beneath her long, billowing sleeve she had seen where Ursa carried a silver lightning scar.

She felt something sink as the ship left the horizon. Would anything change?

She’d never know in the end, of course. She'd never know if she would be able to pull her children out of her husband's hands, or whether they'd stay in his clutches. It hadn’t even been two weeks when a soldier handed her a letter in the gardens, written in the stilted, formal hand that all letters of condolences were inscribed with.

Her nephew was gone.

 _Dear Aunt Ursa,_ he would never write, _I'm not sorry._

She felt something break.

_Lu Ten._

She stood, glacial, absolutely still, as silk-sparrows in an ornamental pear tree sung to each other, and the late afternoon sun was warm on her back. It would be such a shame if she cried here. It was such a beautiful day.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for bearing with me on this one. I know Ursa's family are essentially OCs in this, and we're all waiting to how the endgame with the assassination will go down (it's coming soon!! I promise), but hopefully this doesn't feel too much like 'filler' and you can see how the events here are important for Ursa's development. Tbh, Ursa's family honestly fascinate me a little bit, I have personalities in my mind for all her relatives, and I had to restrain myself a little here (although that didn't stop me ticking up the chapter count for this one). 
> 
> small thing: I know in the comics, Zuko learns with Piandao, but I honestly got the impression that Piandao was very choosy with his students and wouldn't necessarily select a student just because they were of a prestigious background i.e. a Prince. There's something kind of ironic here about Zuko finding freedom in a skill that was essentially forced on his uncles & their family. 
> 
> Also: I start work again for the academic year tomorrow and I'm going to pause writing the last two chapters of Lady Noriko for a bit. I'm hoping it'll all be finished before Autumn is done.


	8. severe hands, scarred hands

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> content warning: depictions of abuse, particularly emotional abuse, with some references to physical abuse (slapping, largely). memory loss, dissociation & mental breakdowns. discussions of hypothetical, imagined animal abuse (hurting birds). this is a heavy chapter in a heavy fic. 
> 
> many, many thanks to my friend [cole](https://cbrickell.tumblr.com) for proofreading this chapter for me.
> 
> [suggested music](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eKIzxQftnx8) (many thanks to Em for this suggestion months ago!)

**viii & ix: the avatar and the fire lord.**

**_THIRTEEN SONGS OF THE MOURNING LARK_ **

  
  
  


**1.**

Everything had been put in its correct place.

Nothing was wrong.

A lark cries out, sudden and loud.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  


**2.**

In the glittering dark of the evening, a woman sits in the luxury of a theatre, behind a silk curtain. 

(The sun was on her back. She is in the garden.)

Her arm is looped around her husband’s like she is a fashionable accessory. The players are giving a shallow performance of _A Crown, Gently Stolen_. She is not paying attention to the melodrama. (She is in the garden.) She turns to her husband, as she traces the shape of the first few words of a printed letter into her palm, _it is with great sorrow,_ into her palm, again, _that I must inform your Royal Highness,_ and tells her husband that she has lost track of the plot. _Of the most grievous news,_ she traces _._ She explains that she cannot tell which actor is playing Avatar Roku and which actor is playing Fire Lord Sozin, they keep switching costumes and crowns and trading places, from hero to villain and back again, and it’s all rather a confusing muddle, _that our nation’s beloved prince, dearest son of General Iroh, has died honourably in battle_.

(The sun was on her back. She is in the garden. She has read the letter eight times.)

Her husband raises his hand. _His brave sacrifice will not be forgotten._ The players stop. The performance grinds to a halt. _The glory he has brought his nation will not be forgotten._ This theatre and its company was named for him, beholden to his patronage in exchange for trite ceremonies, and his amusement is what feeds their mouths. There is a certain panic. The pause is unexpected, here. They cloak their fear well, but she can still catch the scent of it. 

(She reads the letter again. It is always the same. A generic letter for a generic death.)

“Ursa. Remind me, what was your complaint?”

(She is in the garden. The sun was on her back.)

When the woman explains in the smallest of words allowed for one of her station that she has lost track of who is the Avatar and who is The Fire Lord, her husband, the prince, barks with laughter.

It echoes.

He asks “Roku” and “Sozin” to raise their hands.

“It's perfectly simple, Ursa. That one,” he mutters to her, a slender finger indicating in the correct direction. “Is your traitor of a grandfather. Pay attention, will you?”

The woman feels herself nod. She supposes there’s an obvious irony to the situation _._ A tall boy died in the mud with about as much dignity as a common soldier, exactly as he always wanted. She traces shapes.

(The sun was on her back. A lark sings.)

Her husband, however, thinks little of it _(_ _thinks little of her_ _)_ and waves a hand, and the show goes on, as if nothing stopped, as if no one was shocked, or stunned, or held in absolute terror. He is in remarkably good humour for someone who just yesterday attended a funeral.

(The sun was on her back. She is in the garden. A tall boy died fifteen days ago. She has read the letter eight times. A lark sings. She must be dreaming.)

Her husband has been just short of giddy at the news. 

(She is in the garden. Her hands are shaking.)

He has clutched her ear like a shell that will echo every thought, spoken of _opportunities_ and _openings_ at all sorts of inopportune moments. A dangerous thought slips between the lines of a letter or a courtly report, when he whispers of _a change of hands_ behind gossamer-thin screens and silk curtains, between terse discussions of troop withdrawals and white parades and how to properly finance the famine-stricken colonies, while fields lay barren and soldiers’ boots drag through their mud. He is being bold, brazen – almost _shameless,_ and he delights in sharing it.

(The sun is too bright.)

His favourite location, however, to seed the beginnings of what she refuses to call a coup d'état is the glittering dark of the theatre. He leans too close as a chorus circles beneath them, chanting about treason and plots and crowns that were coveted (which ones?) as she finds herself lost in between the lines of a play again.

“The opportunity is ripe,” he says, with just the slightest quiver of excitement in between those cold, clipped syllables, “to claim what should be rightfully mine.”

Claim, he always says, when he speaks. Never _seize_. Never _take._ And why is it rightfully his? She wants to ask. The wrong kind of question that she knows mirrors her father’s own should not form near her lips. For she knows how much space she has been allotted to take up around him (too little) and what part was hers to play (beside him) but since the day her hands held a generic letter for a generic death and felt the way _sorrow_ and _sacrifice_ were indented with the same pressure as _I must inform_ the words began to fuzz up into lines and shapes and strokes without meaning and silence became a growing _screech_ at the back of her left ear and she could not remember how she went from a quiet garden, the sun at her back, to a glittering theatre tracing words now burnt to ashes into her palm until it almost bled, since everything stopped making sense, she has not always had the patience to filter out the wrong questions as the world unravels.

(Eight times. She’s read the letter eight times. A lark sings, and it sounds like it is keening and the world shifts –)

She is tired. She is tired enough to sleep until the next dynasty pulls the crown off this one’s scalp. But her husband is looking at her expectantly. His eyes, more than usual, drink in the slightest movement of her face.

“I think we ought not to be hasty,” she says. “We need to time our movements precisely.”

“Expand,” he says.

He is looking at her differently from usual. As if she is the appetiser, the first morsel of a four course meal. Silence won’t sate him, not now.

“Think of decorum,” she says. “We cannot be seen to be vultures.”

Her husband watches her, as she traces words _(sorrow inform sacrifice most grievous news must be)_ with a sharpened nail into the flesh of her palm where he cannot see. He leans forward, far too close, suddenly, and seizes her wrist, until her fingers stiffen, and still completely. It shocks her.

“I always thought you would quite like the taste of carrion, Ursa. Decorum never stopped you when you burned half that poor soldier boy’s face off.”

Ursa almost frowns. “He was hardly a boy.”

Her husband smiles, briefly. It’s almost a pretty thing. “You get so hung up on the particulars,” he says. “Such a fussy eater.”

He leans in closer, his lips reaching her ear, drawing his fingers from her wrist further down her sleeve where lightning scars are hidden. The sole evidence of imperfection, and a secret in this palace between him and her (her daughter was never supposed to know), that he holds so lightly between forefinger and thumb. As he begins to speak into the curve of her ear she wonders if he will bite her. He is being so shameless.

“You do want this, Ursa,” he whispers, “Did you forget the Agni Kai? You always did have an appetite for more than a life of trivialities.” A finger traces the lightning scar she is supposed to hide. “Why deny it now?”

Ursa swallows. He is right. Everything is in its correct place. The pieces are finally aligned in their favour. It would take one or two moves to claim the entire board. She knows her husband is planting an idea in her head, and she finds herself thinking about what she refused to contemplate: a throne, a crown, a dynasty. She wonders if she wants this. She is not the naïve girl whose hands he took beneath the pruned peach-blossoms and made her promise: _give me loyalty,_ thinking it would only extend between them _._ She knows now how far loyalty goes for her husband. Perhaps she knew, or should have known, that his loyalty would always end with this.

 _“A crown, so gently stolen,”_ declares the player, circling the stage below them. _“Is it not worse to be burned so, by the softer hand?”_

She considers her tiles. She keeps her voice low and soft.

“My lord, I still must advise caution.”

He snorts, and his lips curl with amusement. He still has her in his grip.

“Oh, would you, Ursa? At this very moment?”

(She is in the garden again.)

“The court is still in mourning. The people grieve for their prince.”

He looks at her, still hungry, still playful.

“I doubt even the Fire Lord would see the strength or power in such a bold and daring –”

Her husband grips her arm tight.

“Silence yourself, Ursa.”

(She is in the garden again, the sun is on her back, the fire lark keeps singing and she can smell ash –)

A fatal misstep.

“Ozai, I –”

“Do not presume to know _my father_ –” 

(Garden. Sun. Dreaming. Lark. Eight times. Eight times – on the ninth –)

“–and we will not _squander_ this opportunity on any account, certainly not –”

(She reads the letter eight times.)

She holds her tongue as he lectures her in a furious whisper with his hand a vice around her wrist, and her other hand clenches the armrest as if she will sink through her seat to the other side of velvet and candlelight if she lets go.

(Eight times. She reads the letter eight times--)

When he finishes, she says, in her smallest, and plainest voice, “Of course, my Lord.” 

(On the ninth reading, there is only ash.)

  
  
  
  


(Her husband burnt all of Lu Ten’s letters.)

  
  
  
  


(This is a nightmare.)

  
  
  
  
  


**3.**

Everything had been put in its correct place.

Nothing was wrong.

(before the letter unravelled everything; before she begins dreaming of her father’s once-proud courtyard, neglected as he ailed, of flowering weeds that she kneels to pull from the cracks between stones, but she cannot unearth them, for they are buried too deep, too _deep –_ )

The children had returned to their places (like players, on a stage). Her son would shelter beneath the shade of a budding apricot tree, next to a little pond. There, the smallest of the turtleduck family, too, liked to wet their feathers, as he mumbled his way through the beginnings of blunt and flowery poems whose stanzas he had stumbled over, and slipped inside of his tsungi horn case to hide from prying eyes. Her daughter, who would find his things and rifle through them with a delighted roar, stood proud in a courtyard in the full light of the sun, sharpening a kata until it was sky blue, shadowed by tall, cold men who watched her with small, cold eyes. How easy it would be to forget, watching her precise, perfected motions, that the smile on her face as her father offered a kernel of praise was still a toothy child’s smile, still lop-sided, still star-eyed. Her children would lose all of those uneven edges as they grew tall, pruned into something sharp and poised. (Though, weren’t those uneven edges, all those childish stumbles and missteps, just a little endearing? A question she tried to forget). 

She’d watch them in the half-shade of a veranda, smoothing over anything that tasted the edge of regret. Whatever queer notions venturing out to the wilds to visit her old family estate in the mists had seeded into their heads (like old weeds rising through the cracks between paving stones, twisting, writhing) would be straightened out with routine, with order, with her husband’s careful, attentive hand. She read her letters and wrote invitations for a high sun luncheon in the gardens with her own hand and flame, and not a fire scribe’s, a touch the noble wives found quaintly charming, from their provincial princess. A trivial matter, were it not for the fact that all their husbands were generals lining up lists of their atrocities to submit for one vacant position on the war council. Their wives danced like puppets.

As she wrote, her own husband approached to shadow her. His fingertips on her shoulder were soft and sudden as his voice drew to her ear, low.

“Did you quite enjoy your little jaunt out to your father’s estate, Ursa?”

The woman’s expression clouded, just for a moment. He was watching her so intently.

“Yes,” she said, smoothing out into a soft, pliant smile. “But I much prefer it here.”

He looked at her, for a moment, in silence. She wondered, briefly, if he might lower himself to the crook of her neck, and kiss her softly. She found herself trying to suffocate a sudden impulse to set all her letters alight.

“I’d expect nothing less,” he said.

He did not close the distance, of course. He would never do something so affectionate.

  
  
  
  
  
  


**4.**

When the letter that unravels everything arrives, she etches every detail of the moment to memory like words burned into the skin of a scroll.

(She is in the garden, beneath the curling leaves of an ornamental pear tree. The sun is warm on her back. Silk-sparrows above twitter sweetly and her children's laughter can be heard, faintly, from the distance. 

A sky-lark cries out, sudden and loud, like its lungs are about to burst.) 

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


**5.**

Everything was to be in its correct place, and she gathers herself neatly like everything sensitive that she had so carefully sealed had not just been unearthed, unburied, to know the cruelty of the sun once again, as her husband makes preparations to demand an audience. 

The Fire Lord makes him wait. 

(When she hears thunder, she whispers to her son that he should play with his new swords, in a sheltered little practice yard far from the crackle of a storm. He does not need much encouragement. Her son has become determined to callous his smooth hands in as quick a fashion as possible, shooting upwards with unexpected praise from a tutor, his face stricken with a solemn pride beyond his years, a responsibility she only caught glimpses of in a bright-eyed boy, too tall for his age, hidden in letters his father wrote back from the front. He looks at her with such worry. It breaks her, just slightly.)

Her husband is an impatient man.

(When she hears thunder and sees jagged fire cut through the sky, she tears through every dark corridor in search of a little girl. But she can never seem to find her when lightning strikes. She would like to tell herself that her daughter is too quick to know that flash of rage, the coldest of his fires. Too quick to be caught in the thunderstorm. 

She looks at her clean, unbruised hands. Too quick to be caught.)

The days pass like a fog she can barely breathe through and she remembers little, not the shattered ceramics or the thunder breaking or gentle hands on a hidden scar, only the soreness of her arms and the tiredness of her eyes, like she has been carrying something heavier than herself. She dreams, but while awake. It would not be correct to call them nightmares at the height of the day.

(The sun is always at her back)

She washes her hands.

Everything had been put in its correct place – except she can see the colours of shadows that might have been, and in between the cracks of 'might' and 'must' (where weeds grow), she can spot the wings of a crown bequeathed to her, wrapped in old cloth, unburied from its wooden box, unhidden from beneath a broken tile, worn proudly in her daughter’s hair, now with that same, lop-sided childish smile —

She washes her hands. 

Everything had been put in its correct place – but with the sun at her back, she can smell the weeds of could-bes, and as she reaches for her daughter’s winged crown, it turns into a nest of birds, and it flies away. She does not know what it means.

She washes her hands again.

Everything had been put in its correct place. She watches her children as their shadows disconnect from their footsteps and wander, detached, amongst the weeds. She sees what cannot be.

She washes her hands until the cracks in them bleed.

  
  
  


(Her son is tucked away safely beneath her wing. But where does her daughter hide?)

  
  
  


**6.**

Her hands are clean and neat when her husband receives his audience.

(She still hears the birds.)

The fires in the throne room _roar_ with fury.

(Garden. Lark. Sun. Eight. Eight times. On the ninth–)

It is too soon. Did she not say it is too soon? She feels the fire swallow up all the air in the room. Her husband takes no notice of their brightness, so close to the white of stars. He charges ahead without putting the slightest bit of thought into it, now he is close enough to smell the prize, the victory he has always thirsted for. He has arranged for a familial audience with the Fire Lord, where he could present his two _living_ heirs, dangle them in front of his father’s face as if it is not self-evident exactly what he is seeking.

The fires in the throne room _roar_ with fury. Her throat seizes up.

(Weeds cut through the cracks she wishes she could burn burn _burn–_ )

They will put on a perfect little performance and it will be irrelevant. (She moves like a marionette). Her daughter stands to perform a perfected sequence of steps, immaculate footwork, precise, and clean as her own carefully washed hands, and it too will be irrelevant. Her son will trip over his own feet, and Ursa will shield and soothe him and tuck him away (as has become her role), and tell him he _can't_ give up, tell him to try again with bruised toes and sores all over, he has to _try,_ and it will affect nothing, because the judgement has already been made.

The fires _roar._

(The vines twist in places they should not. It’s not enough–)

It matters not. What her husband wants or even deserves matters not. The palace still smells of incense and smoke. The wax-paper wishes for safe passage across the river of ash, for the spirit to journey on to another life, as bold, as triumphant, are still burning slow and steady in the temple. The Fire Sages still wear white. It is _too soon_.

(She could burn the whole world in her palm and it would never be enough–)

His father will rebuke him. His father will rebuke him, and Ursa wishes she had said something, or held on, somehow, the thought tugs at her that she should even touch him (unthinkable) but he is too far to reach, even if she could.

 _Leave,_ The Fire Lord says.

(Flowers still grow.)

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


She lingers, of course, behind a silk curtain, but she catches only the first words. A handful more than those which were rightfully hers.

Her husband lathers his speech in honey and lowers his head and eyes and back in complete submission, and yet the fires only feed off these paltry words of a boy who should have learned to be silent. What he says does not matter, of course. She has always known that it would not matter if they waited six days or six months or six years. The Fire Lord will give him nothing. The Fire Lord will only take. A flame that could not be quenched, that only asked for more and more.

She is not looking at him. Ursa’s eyes linger where they should not. Towards where the crown sits, untouched by any other hand. Towards the iron gaze of a man who has kept his grip on the throne for over fifty years.

They look so familiar.

(She's seen those eyes before. _Nine years old._ Servants lined up in her father's courtyard. Twelve years old. Her mother's teakettle, brought to a boil. _Fifteen years old._ Fingernails, having left claw marks in the rosewood. _Twenty-five years old._ Her brothers' scars well-hidden beneath the cut of officers’ uniforms.)

She cannot stay. She falters, and turns away, suddenly, while her husband cowers beneath the flames, prostrated in submission to the True Hand of Agni, before the room runs out of air, unable to speak.

She, too, is unable to even utter a syllable in protest.

(All she can taste is her own shame.)

  
  
  
  
  
  
  


_(Why did you say nothing, mother?)_

  
  
  
  
  
  
  


**7.**

  
  


In the gardens, she hears a voice, but she cannot place it.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


She hears it first from a servant. A message painted onto a handkerchief with hidden ink that could only be seen beneath a white flame. _You must know the pain_ , she transcribes, by fire, _of losing._ She hears it again, whispered into her ear by her handmaiden as she fastens up the ribbons beneath her dress, who has it on good authority of the guards on the second shift outside the throne room, that he said, _a first-born son._ She hears it again, as she leaves her quarters after the sun slipped beneath the horizon, and passes the kitchens where she catches the hand of a maid muttering in another’s ear. She tells her to repeat exactly what she had just said, grasping her wrist lightly. “By sacrificing your own,” she says, the words trembling as they spill from her mouth. _By sacrificing your own,_ she writes.

She hears it again when she catches the faint lilt of the melody to which her daughter sings: _daddy’s going to kill you,_ from down a long corridor. 

She considers striking her. Straight across the mouth. 

She recoils, though, at the thought, as soon as she has it. Horrified, that it came to her. Did she consider this before? Her fingers want to reach for the rosewood arm of a chair that is not there and cut into her palm but instead all she does is turn and run, again. The mirror mocks her as she passes: she sees a puppet glide across the water. 

Her daughter is too quick: she’s already left before she could utter a syllable.

  
  
  
  
  


_You must know the pain of losing a first-born son._

  
  
  
  
  
  


**8.**

Her husband says nothing to her. The door to his chambers is shut. She imagines him: his eyes only cold, his face utterly blank, his hair an unruly mess after that meeting (and a servant found crying, outside of his quarters later, but somehow that faded into a background detail). He does not confide in her, come to her side – of course he does not. Ursa always comes to him. Ursa has to force open the door.

When she starts speaking, she begins on her feet.

“You will not take him,” she begins to say, and although it is firm it is quiet enough that one needs to strain to hear. Her world is one of whispers and soft words and even though she wanted to tear out his throat, it would take her time yet to get close. 

“You will _not_ ,” she says. “You will _not touch him,_ Ozai.”

She repeated. She insisted.

“You will not sacrifice _my son.”_

She urged him. She moved forward. 

“You _can't.”_

A vase shattered – how, she cannot remember. Perhaps she screamed at him? It is impossible to imagine that she screamed at him. Almost, certainly, the words wanted to claw out of her throat, but to actually yell? – 

“You – you _coward_. You unconscionable, _miserable_ coward. You cannot even _once_ stand up him – to the man you have always loathed, who has seen you as nothing less than the dirt from which weeds grow –”

Perhaps he slapped her. Struck her, right across the mouth. 

It would be the first time, and that is what makes her question the stinging of her cheek. He had promised her, once, under pruned peach-blossom trees that he would never lay a hand on her, his princess. No, he would not deign to harm a single hair on the head of _his_ princess – but he would break her things and tear up her quarters and smash her porcelain and burn her letters and terrorise _her children_ and –

“Ozai. _Ozai!_ Don’t you feel anything for our son?”

She fell to her knees. She grasped at his robes with begging hands and the picture is desperate, and it is ugly, as she pleaded with him, she pleaded, in the end, _please_ . _Don’t take him_ . _Please_ . _Don’t take him,_ until her voice is hoarse and torn and her hands, again, cannot still themselves.

“Our son _,_ Ozai. _Our son_.”

He watches her weep for her son and she wonders if it is some grand display for his concealed amusement, or whether that is actually an expression of pity on his face.

  
  
  
  
  


**9.**

It doesn’t stop. That is what surprises her: the world doesn’t stop. 

The minutes turn to hours and the light passes long along the wick of a candle. The clear faces of water clocks and carefully segmented sundials and calendars become something incomprehensible. She stops speaking to the Sages who measure them. She spends more time in the gardens, where only the sun arcs across the sky. 

She sits with the sun at her back.

“Mother?”

Her son has turned to face her. She kneels quietly by a still pond, and her fingertips glide across its surface, causing ripples. 

“Zuko?”

His expression is swimming with anguish.

“Will… will everything be alright?”

She stops.

“Oh, darling,” she says. “Oh, Zuko, darling, love.” 

Her voice soft, and aching with concern, she lifts her hand from the water, and gently cups his face. 

She struggles, then – she _truly_ struggles – not to grasp him, to swaddle him tight, as if he is still a babe she can cling to, anchor through this storm. Were that she able to wrap her arms tight around him enough times, and that would ward him from all ill winds that could be thrown in his direction. She could lie to him, effortlessly. 

“Things are… complicated now. But I will always be here for you.”

She could lie to him effortlessly.

“I love you.”

She decides she will not.

  
  
  


On her walks, she goes deeper into the gardens than usual. She passes the still water, and the flowers amongst the reeds, to where the weeds grow.

**10.**

There are shards on the floor, but she cannot tell what is in pieces this time. Her husband has bent down to one knee, so he can look her in the eye. This, in its way, is its own kind of deceit.

“I have always been merciful. I have always been accommodating. I have always been patient, even as you have _tested it_ –” 

He cuts his words short. An exhale, a soft one. He reaches out to slowly tuck a strand of hair that has spilled over her face back in its correct position.

When he speaks again, he speaks softly, so softly.

“I understand,” he says, a hand strokes along her jaw, and oh, _by the stars_ , even the gentlest of his touches hurt. “That you have a soft heart when it comes to our son. And I wish I could save you from this burden. I truly do.”

She’s already on her knees. Desperate. Pleading. He’s such an outstanding liar and right now she wants to believe him. She’s mumbling something about her son – his son – _our_ son – weakly – and when he places a hand on her cheek, it is still stinging, gently.

A misstep, of course. He tuts gently. What was she, but a stumbling collection of missteps, in his eyes?

He does not scold, now, but instead draws her in, and holds her with something still masquerading as tenderness. He holds her close until all the breaths that tremble out of her stop shaking. When she finds herself wanting to speak, he shushes her quietly. Not until she is completely still.

She feels her voice slipping away.

“There’s a simple solution to all of this,” he says, after a time, his voice grave. “It is not a pretty one. I hope you follow.”

Ursa nods.

“You don't want any blood on your hands,” she supplies, in a whisper, trying to mask the bitterness that wants to bleed into her words. “It has to be me.”

“Astute.” The corner of his mouth appears to twist upwards, for a brief second, but it may be a product of her imagination. “I can't have the slightest trace. It would delegitimise my claim.”

Ursa has to hold back a chuckle. It comes out more like a strangled wheeze.

“Ursa,” he warns, with a sudden distance. “Be reasonable. You are, of course, aware that the sages are hotly debating whether my brother has lost The Mandate for his dishonourable conduct on the battlefield. Without my father's support, the Sages’ council will be split, and the line of succession would be disputed. You very well know that there would be civil war.”

She does know. She also doesn’t care. She doesn’t care if the world comes down screaming in fire at this moment. How could she care about anything else when a blade is drawn at her son’s neck? How could anything else _possibly_ matter?

He leans in again. “You _know_ this is the only reliable way, Ursa. The only way to protect our family.”

He loves to twist the knife.

  
  
  


_(A crown, so gently stolen,_ says the player.)

  
  
  
  


**11.**

She does not recall much else of the days. She has less than a passing recollection of stringing the servants in position, arranging it so that only a select few, known for their loyalty to the Lady of the palace, would be serving tea to the Fire Lord on the chosen night. 

(Enough time for something to slip through the cracks.) 

It would be a very precise accident.

 _(I will always be here for you,_ she reminds herself, as she washes her fingertips. _I am loyal to my family.)_

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


**12.**

Everything had been in its correct place and yet she can't stop seeing the colours of shadows of what could have been, the world blurs at the edges, she forgets and she remembers and suddenly she is but isn’t there, detached and distant, for spells at a time. 

When she falls between the cracks, she hears echoes of children’s laughter as her son chases all of his cousins down a dark garden path between ‘might’ and ‘must’, whose edges fade away into a tapestry of wildflowers. They would be so bright, bursting with colour, before their scheduled bloom. Along these flowering vines that could not be, her son will never learn how to tip-toe – _it is with great sorrow,_ she traces _sorrow_ again, raking across her palm – and he will never to quiet his footsteps on his way to blade training, his hands still uncalloused and soft as if they’ve never tried to clench a sword’s hilt like it’s all that keeping him dangling off the edge of the world. Amongst the blooms his smile that he wears proudly will not be a badge he pins on for parades or, worse – _sorrow,_ she traces, as large and ugly as _great –_ his smile will not glint from atop bastions and broken walls above lines of tall children, hiding scars beneath the sleeves of their uniforms, as he tells them they must charge forward to their graves.

This is a nightmare, she tells herself, as she wanders through the disorderly garden. There are no graves here. There are simply flowers. Or perhaps graves are flowers here, a delicate reminder of scattered ashes. And they are carmine and gold and ebony and rust amongst verdant green, her daughter tells her, proudly, and they are not just for show, but to touch and taste and pick too. Her daughter runs along the edges of petals of the vine without trampling them, and yet her movements are graceless and ugly and bold, her hair tumbling out of a winged crown that Ursa had thought she had buried, a crown that was not stolen nor shameful, but hers. 

She calls at her to look. And Ursa does.

And her daughter sings – sings a melody once strung from her mother’s harp, once a gentle lullaby, sung, too, by her grandfather, in a memory that could not be hers, a melody and a memory that is as old as a thousand lifetimes, and for a moment Ursa believes her daughter might fly, as she sings, lifted on the shoulders of everything that has come before, on all the wildflowers that have been tended to carefully –

A nightmare, she tells herself.

  
  
  
  
  
  


(For when was the last time she heard her daughter sing?)

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


**13.**

With her husband, she always makes the same mistake. 

She recalls in detail the picture of dishevelment after the first time she saw his father rebuke him: slumped over his dresser, hair loose, a prince’s crown tossed aside like something worthless. The air stunk of something burning, though she could not tell if it was wood or silk or skin.

The _look_ her husband gave her. If he could have breathed fire, he would have spat it at her. 

– after that, the memory cuts – perhaps there had been bruising words, but no scars left to show for them, and the thick smell of burning, something burning, overwhelms her again – until she recalls the sudden tightness of his arms around her. Was it the _only_ time he ever clung to her? He clung to her, he lay his head on her shoulder and muttered bitterly about every soul who had slighted him, who would be razed to ash, if he’d have his way, oh, he’d have _his way_ – _and you would stay loyal, and true, my Ursa, my princess, wouldn’t you?_

 _Yes,_ she had said. _Yes,_ she had said, too earnest to be delicate. _I would._

Yet another misstep.

She always makes the same mistake. She looks at her husband at his most wretched and wonders if they were both cut, too small, from the same length of cloth (a ridiculous thought). She looks at her husband and sees a broken mirror. 

She should know better than to want. She is a princess, with an attentive husband and two splendid children, and should want for nothing. Yet she still fools herself into thinking those crumbs of false tenderness he’d place out for her to feed from could be seeds, something small and slight but enough to flourish, faintly, and bear something that would be enough to sate her, if not fill her completely. She is a starved bird who knows from all the lean years that there would be no banquet from the terse morsels of her husband’s affection, but perhaps – but perhaps – she could plant something more nourishing. Perhaps this is a beginning.

So she returns, far too eager, to his chambers, bringing with her a delectable head on a platter to share: a ruined career, a slandered reputation, the bitter end of one of his sworn enemies, delicious to them. She turns the demise of foul and important men into feasts for him, perfectly presented, with all the exquisite trimmings one of noble taste would expect. She kneels before him, as if he already wears a crown of flame in his hair, and offers him a feast.

She waits expectantly for his response. 

“I expect you to be gone before sunrise,” he says.

He stands far across the room, his tall back turned to her. All the softness has been snuffed out. Warm melted wax down the neck of a candle counting the hours, counting the minutes, until the incident, has gone cold. 

She bites the inside of her cheek until it almost bleeds.

“You know I cannot have suspected traitors in my court,” he continues. “I hope you do not expect me to explain why.”

She keeps her hands behind her back, her face smooth and expressionless, and tries to cut down the part of him that wants to throttle him as much as the part that wants to tremble. _The execution of the plan was without flaw,_ she considers saying. _Not a soul suspects,_ she considers ramming down his throat. _There is no justification for this_ . _You only want to hurt me,_ she considers, in a voice that trembles with fury earned in a lifetime of disappointment. She considers saying many things, but only one leaves her painted lips.

“And the children…?”

They are, of course, his collateral.

“Are my heirs. And will stay with me.”

She takes one step forward. Her love for her son makes her bold.

“You are asking me to leave my children.”

It is not said with great concern, or alarm. It is quiet. Almost terse.

Ozai turns around.

He looks at her like she is beneath him.

“You knew that there would be a price, Ursa.” He walks towards her. His eyes do not leave hers.

“It is a _heavy_ one,” she says.

“A burden that must be borne,” he says. He stops a pace short of her. Enough to cast a shadow. “A sacrifice that must be made, for their sake.”

“And I must bear it?”

It is barely a question. It is barely even spoken. Quiet, so quiet, that the softest wind could blow it away.

He lurches forward.

“I am surprised,” he says. “That you even had to ask.”

And he begins to circle her. A player, on his stage, in his theatre.

“If you stay,” he begins, as he passes to her left, looping behind her. “You will risk everything we have worked for. You will risk everything we have bled for.”

“I will be _careful_.”

An eyebrow raises. “You are prone to making missteps.”

Ursa has to bite her cheek again.

“There will be no more tolerance for your weakness at this critical stage,” he says. He passes her right, and leans closer. “I have protected you thus far, but the court is rife with vipers. I will instruct you when it is safe to return.”

“And if that is never?”

When he circles past, and catches her eye, and it is as if he grasps it, seizes it, and she is unable to look away.

“There are no better alternatives, Ursa. This is the only way to truly keep them safe.”

A ghost of a hand glides between her shoulder blades, but when she turns to look, he has not touched her.

“Do not make your sacrifices _worthless,”_ he says. 

He closes the distance.

(She's heard that word before.)

And gently, oh so gently, places a hand on her left cheek.

_(Worthless.)_

“If you stay, you risk what you hold most dear. You risk what you _have sought to protect_.” 

_(Worthless,_ he said, as he burnt her letters.)

His hand is hot on her cheek.

(She hears the sound of thunder rumble)

It is as if the air is taken from the room.

It is as if the air is taken from her lungs.

“Can you promise they will be safe?” she asks, quietly.

The words come out trembling.

“They are this nation’s future. They are _my_ future. They are under both the protection of _this_ _nation_ and _my_ protection. They will be safe.”

She nods.

She is not able to speak.

(She always makes the same mistake. It did not matter. It would not matter. It would never be enough. He is an open flame, insatiable, always wanting more and more _and more_ , until there is nothing left of her, his princess, his wife, his kindling to burn. Not even the head of the Fire Lord could sate him.)

  
  
  
  
  
  


_(Is it not worse to be burned by the softer hand?)_

  
  
  
  
  


**exodus.**

A servant will grind poison into tea leaves, knowing it only to be imported spices. Another will carry an austere tea set to the Fire Lord’s chambers for his nightly tea ceremony. Fingers will slope around a handle to pour boiling water, the tea is fragrant, almost sweet rose. The servant will bow, and slide the door shut as the stars come out.

(A woman sits alone in the gardens, contemplating the gravity of her actions.)

The Fire Lord will sit in solitude for the last breaths of the day. This moment, he always insists, is his alone. 

(A woman sits alone in the gardens. She will never see the final, severe movements of his long, bone-like hands.)

At daybreak, a courier will deliver a message to the council of sages, written in Azulon’s hand. Two servants will corroborate that it was his words. The message will announce that Iroh has lost The Mandate in his eyes, and that Prince Ozai, now the favoured one, touched by the sun, ready to ascend to Agni’s True Hand. 

It is a masterful forgery, of course. Every word, every turn of phrase, so carefully selected, so that even in death, Azulon would never speak too fondly of his now-favoured son. One imagines there is a perverse kind of pride

(A woman sits alone in the gardens. Her fingers skirt the edge of the water with the same delicacy as when they might linger on the edge of a mother-of-pearl tea cup, or around the handle of a precious comb. All her movements are beautiful, as if she is in a reverie.) 

  
  
  


(Everything has been put in its correct place.)

(Nothing was wrong.)

(A man dies.)

  
  
  


##

(She tucks away a memory of kissing her son goodbye in a safe place where it no longer hurts to think about.)

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


##

She remembers kneeling. Prising open something she should not, collecting it in her hands, clutching something sharp in her fingers.

Perhaps it is a knife. It does not feel like a knife, though.

She remembers feeling furious. 

(A lark sings. It is shrill and it sounds like keening.)

  
  
  


It is dark, she realises. When did the time pass? She does not recall how the sun slipped away from her or the moon rose or how she came to be lost in the gardens. What was she looking for? Memory is a maze. She is slipping again (missteps, so many missteps) between being there and not there. She recalls writing letters and feeding turtleducks and brushing hair but it twists into older recollections, and she pictures a plucked harp and a decaying estate and roots that sink deep below her feet as the mist-owls watch with blank white eyes as the white blossoms and white ivy curl up the ruins and the bark, and now she is lost. She is furious: she is _so_ lost.

 _(A crown gently stolen_ , whispers the chorus.) 

_(A man died today_ , whispers the chorus.)

She wanders in the dark, clutching something sharp, straying from her neatly paved path to walk amongst the weeds, white reeds, whispering things that cannot be. She sees a flock of two-headed herons sail with twin beaks cawing **_sorrow_** and **_sacrifice,_** and **_soft_** and **_stolen_** _._ She does not recognise this place. 

_(She can hear her son and daughter shrieking, as they chase a fire-bird that was once lost trapped in a golden cage, atop the head of nobility, to place it in their hair like an ornament.)_

She does not recognise this place, and it frustrates her.

_(She can hear her son and daughter shrieking, as they race to catch the bird in their hands, as they rush to pluck its feathers, to hold the most fire in their hands, as the fire bird begins to cry out in pain. They cannot hear it.)_

The air is heavy, as if it is about to rain but it is hot and thick and smells like ash. A man died today. It strikes her, faintly, that he was once the Fire Lord. Regicide. It shocks her, and it doesn’t.

(A chorus with no eyes chants: _The Fire Lord is dead. All hail the Fire Lord.)_

And how little it matters. It makes her laugh, how little it matters. A Fire Lord is still a man, after all, who can choke on his own bile, no matter what _Agni_ says of it. And it is easy, quite elementary, to kill a man. It is laughably simple. She laughs now, loud, head swung fully back, and it echoes through the trees and whistles through the reeds. All those tightly held principles, cut short with a cup of tea.

(A chorus with no tongues chants: _All hail the Fire Lord)._

She killed a king for a king. A Fire Lord for a Fire Lord. She holds not a knife but a stolen crown in between her fingers, but what does it matter? All her mother’s speeches stressing loyalty, loyalty to Lord and Nation above all else, or remain marred by the stain of grandfather’s dishonour, what did they matter? Did they matter? Of course they mattered, a quiet little voice wants to say, but their nation is one where _sacrifice_ and _sorrow_ and _I must inform you_ carry the same weight on the page. She has committed the most heinous of crimes, she is sickening, shameless, and detestable, but what does it matter?

She laughs.

_(The chorus chants: All hail Fire Lord Ozai)_

She knows, in the most twisted sense of the word, Ursa never did stray from her duty. Ursa was to cleanse the record. Ursa was to remove the stain. Ursa was to burn away until there was nothing left.

_(All hail Fire Lord Ozai.)_

And she burned, and she burned, and she _burned,_ for _him,_ until she was no longer able to breathe. She is loyal to the Fire Lord.

_(All hail Fire Lord Ozai.)_

But she does not feel light, or full, or pleased, or content.

_(All hail)_

She only feels empty.

She only feels rage.

_(All hail)_

For what did it matter without her children?

_(All hail)_

The white blossoms float above her head and the white roots twist and the sky changes from black to red to grey. All colour has drained away. There are no wildflowers, not here, where the ash falls like rain. It matters not. It matters _not._

( _All hail the Fire Lord,_ chants the chorus with no faces, no traces of who they once were, and the words circle her like smoke, _All hail Fire Lord Ozai)_

Her hand clutches something sharp. All the world turns white, the colour of mourning. 

  
  
  


  
She wanders in the fog

 _(Who are you Ursa?_ sings the silk-swallow with two beaks but no tongue)

of faceless things

 _(Is it who you ought to be?_ sings the heron-boy with two heads but no face)

for what feels like an eternity

 _(Would you like another face?_ sings the nightingale-lark, whose feathers are bleached white)

the spirits laugh at this wretched bird, who has forgotten her own claws.  
  
  
  


  
  
  
  


Eternity passes her by, and she finds herself at the feet of a statue. Perhaps she has wandered for an endless stretch of time, or perhaps, none at all. She has stopped counting. 

This place is familiar. She is not sure how, exactly. She only knows that she has been here before, in a different place, at a different time. It is a shrine that should be crumbling, broken by the rain and the wind.

But instead, it is covered by white flowers.

(She is nine years old. Tearing herself out of her mother's grip, scolded again, for only doing what she was told. Keep her tongue. Hold her breath. But there’s none of that silence now. _Why are_ you _my ancestor?_ She howls. She screams _. It's your fault. It's_ your _fault that she hates me_.)

A thousand flowers that have no place in the royal gardens, spouting from where its stone eyes couldn't see and its stone hands couldn't feel –

(She is twelve years old. Tearing off the bandage for the first time. Lightning at her fingertips, royal fire at her hands, the rising star of her generation, and what did it cost? Not a word from her father. No letters brimming with pride in between clipped expressions and precise instructions. The wound still cuts at her. _Why did it have to be_ you _who gave me this? It's your fault_ , she spits, holding back more venom. _It's your fault he acts like I'm not even his_.)

A pox of twisting weeds, leaves bleached white, that coil up its whole height but show just enough for her to know it is where her own features could have been carved from –

(She is fifteen years old. Tearing through every scrap of research from journals, notebooks, and old letters they shouldn't have kept. She has to help capture the Avatar. She is the salt in the wounds to her betrothed – sixteen, sailing across the world to find him. _Why do you hide from us? It's your fault. It's_ your _fault_ , she says, with a bitterness that has yet to be softened. _I never even wanted this. I never even wanted to be married, why does it_ hurt _already?_ )

And, on occasion, she thinks of this face, from old sketches in hidden boxes that should have been buried or burned. She thinks of this face when she feels empty. She thinks of this face when she feels rage.

(She is twenty-five years old. The offering plate is brimming with old tears and pressed flowers. The incense burns slow. She has nothing to say: only a pregnant belly to show. The silence deafens.)

She searched for it. Blazed a trail amongst the rough hills outside of her father’s home, for a defaced shrine, a broken face, that hadn’t been worn smooth by rain and time. She searches for just a shadow in the same shape as what her brothers once encountered, behind the curtain of a waterfall in the forests of grandmother’s faded estate, in that wild other life where she still had a fraction of space left to breathe.

Water trickles behind her. 

And here it stands, here _he_ stands, perfectly preserved (except for the flowers (the flowers still grow)). Strange, that he would be here. Logically impossible. She does not care to think on the probability, her knuckles still white with rage.

She takes a step forward.

“This is your fault,” she says to him, the statue.

( _Your fault_.)

It’s barely a whisper.

“It _is_ your fault,” she says again. “I have been placed in an impossible position. An _impossible_ position.”

( _Your fault_.)

Her hands tense up.

“You understand,” she says. “I wouldn’t _be_ here – I wouldn’t, I _wouldn’t_ – if you’d just _done_ your supposed duty. If you’d just... ”

Louder. Her voice needs to be louder.

“Do you even _understand_ what he has asked me to sacrifice? Do you _know?_ ”

A wind blows.

The flowers shake. 

“I _acknowledge_ my flaws. I know he is a vile man. And yes, I would have given him _anything._ I would have – I _have killed_ for him. Because I am loyal. I _am_ loyal.”

Petals fall.

“I would have given him _anything – anything in the world_ except – except–”

She turns, to look away.

_(I would have given him anything.)_

She thinks of a little boy, already growing too tall, who likes to clamber up walls that he can’t yet reach, and she watches him fall, again and again _and again,_ as she encourages him softly, to ignore the word ‘can’t’. She thinks of a little girl who watches lightning strike with wide eyes, who only speaks if her words can cut someone apart, who no longer squirms as she brushes out every tangle in her hair until it is perfectly straight.

She swallows the words she cannot say.

_(I would have given him anything.)_

She looks up again, at the bare flowers.

“You understand, he asked for the _one thing_ I cannot give. The _one thing._ That is my test and that is my trial. And now I am _stuck –_ because to stay, that would be an act of defiance, against my Lord. Treason. Betrayal. I suspect you know something of that.”

A faint smile leaves her. It is without any mirth.

“So I cannot stay. But I cannot leave them."

She grips the crown in her fingers tightly.

"I cannot leave... I cannot, I cannot, _I cannot, grandfather, I simply cannot.”_

She grips the crown so tightly that it grazes into her fingers.

“It is _your fault._ If you had just done it – if you had just _killed_ him –” and her voice breaks, and raises, up to a cry, “–if you had just _killed Sozin_ – I wouldn’t _be in this position!_ I wouldn’t _be burdened with this!_ ”

She grips the crown, the winged crown, the Avatar’s crown, so tightly that it cuts through.

“But you couldn't just kill him, could you? You defied him, you opposed his reign, you opposed your _very own nation,_ oh, you made _all_ the right noises and had all the appropriately provocative denouncements _just so_ , but you couldn't follow through with it, could you? You couldn’t kill the Fire Lord when it _mattered.”_

Her fingers are bleeding.

“You are _weak._ You are weak and craven. Your _weakness_ has burdened your very own descendents with those very same choices you were too _gutless_ to take!”

Her fingers are _bleeding._

“We all _suffer!_ We all suffer, because of you! Because of _your_ legacy! Did you think about the consequences of your actions? Did you think about the pain you would have caused? And yet _you are still silent. And yet you still hide!”_

She hurls the crown at the floor and she screams.

She _screams._

“Why do you _say_ nothing? Why do you say _nothing? Why?”_

The wind blows. 

Petals fall.

_“Why did you say nothing?”_

Then suddenly, its eyes turn white.

  
  


And suddenly the whole world fills with colour.

  
  


And suddenly there is not a statue.

  
  


And suddenly there is a woman.

**Ursa** **.** **Do you truly believe you have no hand in this?**

And her voice echoes, and it is all the stars in the sky and all the many faces of the moon, it is all the heaviness of the earth beneath her feet and every direction of the wind, it is the light of the sun and the dark of its absence, it is the storm and the seas tossed by it, it is many, it is one, it is everything together and apart, in totality, inseparable, and yet free, in a woman’s voice. A woman’s voice.

Ursa stands before the Avatar, a woman, bewildered and mortal.

(Perhaps all the colour drains from her face. Perhaps her hands flutter, perhaps her throat closes up, perhaps the words come out stilted. She doesn’t pay the slightest attention to her petty reactions for the only thought she can cling onto is: _I have to speak._ )

“I… I had _no_ options,” she tells her. “I had _no choice_.”

**You always have a choice.**

The woman comes into focus. She is tall. She wears green. She towers over Ursa, with her face painted white for treachery and red for fearlessness, like a player from the Ba Sing Se opera. Ursa should know exactly what that means and who she is and her name rings at the back of her mind like the bellflowers: silent. The details seem so inconsequential.

She shakes her head.

“Not with him,” she says. “He has taken all the choices I could have had. He has taken them all and turned them to ash.”

There is a moment of silence.

**Then you deny it?**

Something bitter rises in her throat.

“You would not have done better in my position.”

**You deny your own volition. You deny your own power.**

“ _Power?_ What am _I_ to do? What _other choice_ do I have?” Her hands rise to her temples from where her hair has begun to spill from her hairpiece, limp and messy. “I _will not_ sacrifice my own children – I _refuse –_ you cannot _possibly_ expect me to do _such a thing.”_

 **I expect nothing,** she says, with a gravity that shakes the earth beneath her feet. **But you must reckon with the consequences of your actions.** She speaks with the solemnity of a truth-seeker seeking a confession, where Ursa is the suspect before this heavenly judge, in this court of strange flowers. **You refuse to sacrifice your own children,** she continues. **but instead, you offer the rest of the world up for the slaughter.**

Ursa scowls. “You speak of war,” she says, bitterly. “The war that _you_ failed to prevent. The war that we are now saddled with, as it bleeds our nation dry.”

 **The war that** ** _your_** **people and** ** _your_** **nation has waged against the world for a hundred years. Do not speak of war as if it is a storm that has plagued you, when for almost one hundred years your people have** ** _decimated_** **entire cities and peoples. You have plundered and pillaged every square inch of earth you could take, laid waste to anything that you could not profit off,** **burned whole villages and taken countless lives. The foreign teas and fine silks and priceless porcelain that frame your whole world are formed from the backs of suffering on an unprecedented scale. You have a hand in this. You have always had a hand in it.**

Ursa listens to this without interruption. She listens with a face and figure that can no longer be straightened. Hunched shoulders, clenched fingers, ribbons of hair falling away, astray, as a touch of blood still lingers on her hands, she looks to the eyes of the Avatar with still grit in her glare, and stares. 

“Is _this_ all you offer me? _A propaganda lecture?”  
_

**You are one of the privileged few who sees the uncensored reports from the front lines. You tell me what is propaganda.** Her tone has turned severe and cutting. **Does the war matter to you at all, Ursa?**

“Of _course_ it matters.”

**Did it matter before your nephew died?**

Ursa’s eyes narrow. She says nothing. 

**You are** **_Princess_ ** **Ursa of the Fire Nation. You command a great deal of influence at court. You have ended more than one man’s career over a slight. You are not a simple puppet. You have orchestrated the death of the Fire Lord –**

“To _protect_ my family. To protect the _only_ things in this world that are _truly_ mine–”

**And yet you hesitate now.**

Ursa stops.

_(Why do you do nothing?)_

Her lip trembles.

_(Why do you cower before lesser men?)_

She wants to tear out her hair. 

**Your nation seeks to conquer the world believing itself right and just. Your entire nation has shaped itself around an eternal conflict, turning children into soldiers with pride, equating death and sacrifice with glory and honour. You know the cost of this.**

Her fingers curl up and she tries not to think of all the things she thought to bury along with a stolen crown, along with the cadence of a letter praising _sorrow_ and _sacrifice,_ the forgotten corners of her father’s library full of her mother’s forbidden poetry, speaking of foreign concepts like _harmony_ and _balance_ that she had thought no more than the principles of a pai sho game, in between piles of uncensored reports that count corpses in piles, the mounting figures of dead teenage boys, that drown all the unsent letters and lazy sketches locked in her grandmother’s box that desperate hands were pulling through, the words _Dear Sozin_ heading a letter describing a world full of colour and levity and song that she could not recognise in her own, the words _Dear Sozin_ head a letter, flooding with more affection than she had ever known in all her fifteen years of existence–

 **Do you believe your husband, a man who did not even mourn his own nephew, who would sacrifice his own son, would ever put a stop to this unrelenting conquest? Do you believe he would lift a finger in hesitation when it comes to** **_his very own_ ** **children joining the battlefields?**

Ursa looks up firmly. 

“My family _will be_ safe.”

**He lies to you, Ursa.**

The Avatar’s voice has softened, but Ursa does not look away. 

“I am quite aware of my husband’s own imperfections. I do not need you to inform me, nor do I expect _you_ to understand.”

Because the Avatar has no concept of loyalty, belonging to all nations and none. Because the Avatar has no concept of the cost she has paid, no matter how soft the burning look in the Avatar's eyes might be, as if she could understand, somehow, all that she has endured. She has given all her loyalty and all her love and all her being, burning until she can no longer breathe, to protect the only thing that matters.

 **Ursa,** the Avatar says, and her voice is unbearably soft, unbearably _kind._ **He is just a man.**

Just a man. Not a god, nor a monster, nor a malignant entity from beyond the pale that blights her family, nor a celestial being with his own gravity no matter how much he takes and takes _and takes,_ but a man who cowers before his father and lies to his wife, for whom the world exists to bruise and break until he gets a taste of what he wants.

_(He lies to you)_

A man, not a monster. A man, a liar, a coward.

_(And why do you say nothing?)_

**Ursa. You do not have to endure this.**

The Avatar is not incorrect: he does _lie_ to her. He has always lied to her. He lies to her so gently and she always wants to swallow it whole. That's the bother: she knows it's all wrong, that it's delightful nonsense, that the truth contains multitudes more pain. She has always been perfectly aware it's all wrong (and it gnaws at her, beneath all those layers of artifice, _it gnaws_ ), but just for one second – one blissful second – she'd like to believe that everything is in its right place –

**You have a choice.**

Ursa glances upwards. The Avatar is looking at her softly and it feels like the weight of the sun itself.

**You are not a simple instrument. No matter what he has told you. No matter what he says–**

“Stop,” she says, the word quiet, but piercing. “Stop. I would rather – rather _your scorn_ than your pity.”

The wind blows again. 

The flowers chime like old prayer bells as it touches them. They sing, _cry out, (it sounds like keening)_ with no order, with no rhyme, no reason – not that she has the knowledge to tell. The people who rung such bells died almost a hundred years ago.

 **Then you choose to do nothing. You leave the most pressing task incomplete.** Her words grow heavy, grow grave. **And now you let the children of the world die in your country’s thirst for conquest. You condemn the next generation to carry your burdens in your place. The cycle continues.**

“You chastise me for _your_ failures, not mine.”

The Avatar’s expression is an unending wall. Insurmountable and blank.

**The past cannot be altered. The present still can.**

The wind stills.

The bells stop ringing.

The prayers are still unanswered.

**What will you choose, Ursa?**

_I did not ask for this._ Ursa wants to scream. _None of this was my choice_. She wants to scream it, pull it out her lungs, and _screech_. Cry out – like a keening bird – that she never asked for this. Cry out – that she shouldn't have the world on her shoulders. It’s not fair. It’s _not fair._ It's not her burden to carry – it's the Avatar – it's _the Avatar_ who should bear this – it's _the Avatar_ who should bear the brunt, for having vanished, abandoned them (abandoned her), a riddle lost in a fickle gust of wind, leaving only vacant statues and haunting visions, glimpses mistaken for madness – 

But the words feel hollow.

The wind blows again, and flower petals dust her feet.

Everything chokes up.

 **Ursa** , the Avatar says, and it is a grave judgement, a foreboding proclamation, and it is the kindest thing she has ever heard spoken, the softness that it is said, in just one word. **Ursa** , the Avatar says, as Ursa trembles, as she _cannot stop trembling,_ as her hands twist into something clawlike as she tries, she so desperately tries, to swallow her tears, but it isn’t working, _it isn’t working_ –

“I don’t understand,” she says. “Why speak to me? Why, of all the wretched, pitiable creatures?”

The Avatar blinks slowly. Without ceremony, she moves to kneel on the carved stone plinth she towers from. And when she kneels, it is as if the world kneels with her. The bellflowers bow their heads and the wind slows, and the lights around them soften into a warm amber (the same shade of a little fire-bird’s wings, that colour she once delighted her daughter with, during gentler years). She looks to Ursa, now, on the same level, and carefully, unfastens her gloves.

Ursa’s eyes widen in shock.

The Avatar’s hands are riddled with raw, furious lightning scars. Jagged and white, they scour the lengths of her fingers and cut across her knuckles, sear into the creases of her palms – palms that should be smooth and strong and clear – swallowing every inch of softness.

“Why?” 

It is a soft question, and not one she means to ask, and yet the word falls out of her mouth.

 **It was only a man, Ursa,** says the Avatar. **And he is dead now.**

She turns her scarred hands over as if to open them, as if to offer them – before she leans down.

From the ground, the Avatar picks up the discarded crown of Roku. Her fingertips move with a peculiar gentleness, tracing carefully along the ridges as if they’ve missed the shape of it. It is difficult to discern whether her touch is that of a mother’s, having found a remnant of a lost child tucked away in an old box they thought would not be opened again, or that of an adult, touching an old piece of themselves they had thought lost, discarded, hidden away. Those lightning-scarred hands close around it, for just a moment, and the Avatar allows herself one long, heavy sigh. 

After the moment passes, her hands open again, and outstretched, they offer the crown to Ursa. Two palms, criss-crossed with lightning, and a traitor’s crown.

**It is yours to take, if you choose.**

Ursa looks at the Avatar, bewildered and mortal.

**You think you have no choice. So I am offering you one.**

The wind blows for the last time.

The flowers shake.

Petals fall.

**What will you choose, Ursa?**

A lark sings.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> SO
> 
> I HAVE WAITED
> 
> SINCE JULY. SINCE JULY!
> 
> TO INCLUDE THIS CONVERSATION WITH KYOSHI. I HAVE BEEN SITTING ON THIS FOR FIVE MONTHS. 
> 
> anyway
> 
> thank you ALL for being so patient with this chapter. we are SO close to the end here. this chapter got so gargantuan that i had to split it for my own sanity. please forgive me for denying the catharsis of ursa murdering ozai for yet ANOTHER chapter but i felt that ending on this very *important* conversation (that ursa may or may not do some genuine introspection about) was a relief from the misery for the first 2/3rds of this chapter. i've been trying to hint that this convo has been coming for a while and hopefully the explicit discussion of politics (& condemnation of ursa's complicity in fire nation imperialism) doesn't feel out of place. ursa very much believes in her own helplessness at this point to the extent of denying volition. 
> 
> i hope you enjoyed ursa, parent of "why am i so bad at being good" zuko and "i am about to celebrate being an only child" azula show herself to be a dramatic equal to "phoenix king" ozai in this chapter wherein she dissociates so hard that she ends up in the spirit world and yells at a statue of her grandfather for not murdering sozin. i certainly enjoyed writing it.
> 
> edit: just wanted to add a few notes! kyoshi having lightning scars on her hands is canon as of the Rise of Kyoshi novel. and the 13 songs structure among other things is actually a reference to how skylarks in beijing parks are taught to sing in 13 tones (tho i think its a bit of an old man hobby from research lmao). A Crown, Gently Stolen is made up and will probs be the title of the Sozin & Roku fic i want to write (one day...)

**Author's Note:**

> This was a one-shot that spiralled out of control, and I'm publishing it in parts instead. 
> 
> Find me here: [on tumblr](https://zuzuslastbraincell.tumblr.com/).
> 
> Thank you so much for reading <3\. Comments are dearly appreciated and really do mean the world to me.


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